Isles of the Blessed

“ Christianity also commands us, before all, to be resigned to God. This is yet the highest wisdom that Heaven has revealed to our earth.” See “Heroes and Hero-Worship.”
Island of Saints, a name given to Ireland in the Middle Ages.
Islands of the Blessed, fabled islands of the far west of the ocean, where the favoured of the gods after death are conceived to dwell in everlasting blessedness.
Islay (7) , a large mountainous Island 13 m. W. of Kintyre, Scotland; much of it is cultivated; dairy produce, cattle, and sheep are exported ”

“ Again, all changed. Like stars in multitude, bright islets multiplied around. Emerald-green, they dotted shapes fantastic: circles, arcs, and crescents;—atolls all, or coral carcanets, begemmed and flashing in the sun. ”

“ And, in turn, shadow has come out of the sea upon Wales and fallen upon the upland watercourses from the norland fells, while in the Gaelic isles purple and gold cloths are still piled deep upon the fiery threshold of the sunset: and when the last isles themselves are like velvet-dark barques afloat in a universe of opal and pale yellow and faint crimson, a radiant sun still blooms like a flower of fire among the white pinnacles of wandering berg and the everlasting walls of ice. ”

“ So he turned up landward, bewailing the miss of us, but presently, before we had seen the last of him, was cheerful again and singing.
So we went on our way; and we also, we maidens, in our turn, saw those woeful images of the Isle of Queens and the Isle of Kings; and we came to the Isle of Nothing, and abode warily by our ferry, and so came away safe, and thus, as thou wottest, home to the castle to hear evil tidings of thee. ”

“ Such are the Happy Isles, whereunto few have come, save but as roaming shadows in the night, and for only a little while.
'But longer than is needed to make me strong and fierce again I may not stay, and at set of sun, when my arms are strong again, and when I feel in my legs that I can plant them fair and bent upon the floor of ocean, then I go back to take a new grip upon the waters of the Straits, and to guard the Further Seas again for a hundred years. Because the gods are jealous, lest too many men shall pass to the Happy Isles and find content. ”

“ And after that, they chop all the body in small pieces, and pray all his friends to come and eat; and they send for all the minstrels of the country and make a solemn feast. And when they have eaten the flesh, they take the bones and bury them, and sing and make great melody. The king of this isle is a great and powerful lord, and has under him fifty-four great isles, which give tribute to him ”

“ The relics of hermitages and stone basins are not the only signs of vanishing humanity to be found upon the isles. And, curious to say, that spot which of all others in settled communities is most animated, at the Enchanted Isles presents the most dreary of aspects. ”

“ An archipelago of fifty-six islands lies scattered over the water, with only half of them inhabited, but not all the rest habitable; if, like Sancho Panza, you are looking for an island, you will not find the isle of heart's desire here. ”

“ Thus the island was from the beginning a holy island. But zeal for God in their own country alone not being enough for their ardor, those men of God were early moved by the impulse of going abroad to spread the faith. Volumes might be written of their apostleship among barbarous tribes; we have room only for a few words.
They first went to the islands north of them, to the Hebrides, the Faroe Isles, and even Iceland, which they colonized before the Norwegian pirates landed there. Then they evangelized Scotland and the north of England ”

“ And setting sail the ships hove back across the Central Sea and came again to the Islands Three, where rest the feet of Chance, and said to the people:
"We have seen the gods."
But to the rulers of the Islands they told how the gods drove men in herds; and went back and tended their flocks again all in the Prosperous Isles, and were kinder to their cattle after they had seen how that the gods used men. ”

“ Holy Island was perhaps a hundred yards long, and about half as many broad; it was covered with trees and a dense growth of rhododendrons; somewhere in the jungle was a ruined fragment of a chapel, smothered in ivy and briars, and in a little glade in the heart of the island there was a holy well. We landed, and it was obviously a sore humiliation to Philippa that not a sound was to be heard in the spell-bound silence of the island, save the cough of a heron on a tree-top. ”

“ After it, save in midwinter, walls seemed to weary and roofs to smother him. The drove began to low at daybreak, and soon they were all cropping the grass or browsing in the briers. Then the milking, and breakfast over a camp fire, and soon after sunrise they were all tramping in the road again.
It was a pleasant journey—the waysides glowing with the blue of violets, the green of tender grass, the thick-sown, starry gold of dandelions. Wild fowl crossed the sky in wedge and battalion, their videttes out, their lines now firm, now wheeling in a long curve to take the path of the wind. ”

“ For the rest, they are but melancholy places, these Aran Isles of ours, as you and I know well, and the following pages have caught their full share—something, perhaps, more than their full share—of that gloom. That this is an artistic fault no one can doubt, yet there are times—are there not?—when it does not seem so very easy to exaggerate the amount of gloom which life is any day and every day quite willing to bestow. ”

“ The next day the saint got a boat, and he and Fintan and a number of the people from the villages went to the island. St. Patrick blessed the little island, and it was not long until a number of pious men came and cut out [the site of] a monastery on the island, and from that time to the present, good people go on a pilgrimage to that blessed island. ”

“ The inhabitants of these islands collectively, are, without exception, the finest race of people in this sea. For fine shape and regular features, they perhaps surpass all other nations. Nevertheless, the affinity of their language to that spoken in Otaheite and the Society Isles, shews that they are of the same nation. ”

“ We have also the curious fact of our outlying islands, such as the Shetland Isles, the Isle of Man, and the little Lundy Island, possessing each some peculiar forms which, certainly, do not exist on our principal island which has been so very thoroughly worked. ”

“ Honorat, the Happy Isle (beata illa insula) , as it was once called, famous for its ancient monastery, that played so glorious a rôle in the religious history of Gaul. 1351These are the isles of Lérins, two gems of that collar of pearls thrown by God around the Mediterranean Sea, to quote St. Ambrose, where once those who would escape from the perilous charms of the world found refuge. ”

“ The bay in which the Isles lay was quite deserted; the moorland came to the edge of the cliffs, and through a steep and rocky ravine, the sides of which were overgrown with ferns and low trees, all brushed landward by the fierce winds, a stream fell hoarsely to the sea, through deep rockpools. ”

“ It shows that a spiritual receptivity, a purity of heart and uprightness of character exists potentially amongst many of the peoples of the Pacific Isles to an extent equal to that of the tribesmen of Africa. ”

“ The Western Isles, and more especially that group lying south of the holy island of Iona, were at this time in a most prosperous condition. Together with a large tract of country on the northeast of Ireland, they formed a sort of naval empire, with the open sea as its centre. They were densely populated. The useful arts were carried to a degree of perfection unsurpassed in other European countries. ”

“ They had reached, she felt, a sunny island where peace dwelt, sanity reigned and the sun for ever shone, the blessed island of good boots. ”

“ In the middle of the Irish Sea there is, as every one knows, an island which for many ages has had its own people, with their own language and laws, their own judges and governor, their own lords and kings, their own customs and superstitions, their own proverbs and saws, their own ballads and songs. ”

“ Forster the father is decided in opinion, as to the revolution that has undoubtedly occurred in this island, being occasioned by a volcano and earthquake, and gives a very curious account of a notion prevalent amongst the Society Isles, and forming indeed part of their mythological creed, which, if to be credited, affords support to it. ”

“ Paul's Church, having had to give up his living in England owing to throat trouble. He advised me to make an expedition to the Island of St. Honorat, one of the Isles de Lerins, some six miles distant, where I had a most interesting time.
One of these Islands is the place where the man with the iron mask was confined; the other famous for its monastery, founded by Honoratus in 410 A.D. It is a little gem of beauty in the blue Mediterranean; "Beata ilia Insula" was its old title; that Isle of Happiness. ”

“ These islets are called Isles des Aves, or Bird Islets. I have landed upon them; they are not inhabited, save by countless flocks of sea birds, and they are full of good harbours and creeks, where a ship may commodiously ride at anchor. My advice, then, to Juan Gramada, and he hath taken it, was to let his ship pause at these islands, her captain having been there once before ”

“ MY OWN NATIVE ISLE.
Music by Bishop.
There's an isle, clasped by waves in an emerald zone,
That peers forth from ocean so pearl-like and fair,
As if nature meant it the water-king's throne;—
A youth, whom I name not, remembers me there.
The breeze now in murmurs a 'plaint brings from far,
From my own native isle and my lover's guitar.
O! cheer thee, fond mourner, let hope's whisper soften
The wild pang of absence and doubt too unkind,
The maid thou upbraidest for thee sighs as often,
And speeds gentle wishes by every wind. ”

“ The island is nearly three miles long, north-west and south-east, and is moderately high and cliffy at the ends; the middle part is a sandy isthmus, not more than half a mile broad, but the breadth of the higher ends is from one-and-half to two miles. This island is the central one of a group; for besides the four small isles to the north-east, there are two close to the west end, and two others, something larger, lying off to the southward. I call these the ISLES OF ST. FRANCIS; in the persuasion that the central one is that named St. Francis by Nuyts. ”

“ As we read our island history there seems a ruddy emblazonry on every page, a hue shed from behind the visible, the soul dropping its red tears of fire over hopes for ever dissolving, noble ambitions for ever foiled. ”

“ It is enough for me to possess the Isle of Desire—the evergreen isle that "sluttish time" has never besmeared with ruin—where one may wander whithersoever the mood of the moment wills, or loll in the shade of scented trees, or thread the sunless mazes of the jungle—that region of shadow where all the leaves are dumb—listening for faint, ineffective sounds, or bask on the sand—on clean, unviolated, mica-bespangled sand—dreamily gazing over a sea of flashing reflections where fitful zephyrs, soft as the shadows of clouds, alone make blueness visible. ”

“ Every island, says Sir Edmund Head, and truly—for the name of almost every island on the coast of England, Scotland, and Eastern Ireland, ends in either ey or ay or oe, a Norse appellative, as is the word island itself—is a mark of its having been, at some time or other, visited by the Vikings of Scandinavia. ”

“ The belief in a western land, or group of islands, was prevalent among the Kelts as well as the Greek and Latin geographers, and was with them an article of religion, upon which were founded superstitious practices, which perpetuated themselves after the introduction of Christianity. ”

“ So this Isle, once called the Sacred Isle and also the Isle of Destiny, may find a destiny worthy of fulfilment: not to be a petty peasant republic, nor a miniature duplicate in life and aims of great material empires, but that its children out of their faith, which has never failed may realise this imemorial truth of man's inmost divinity, and in expressing it may ray the light over every land. Now, although a great literature and great thought may be part of our future, it ought not to be the essential part of our ideal. ”

“ There are cliffs upon that island which look westward over the ocean and rise eighteen hundred feet above it, and the inhabitants will tell you that, when the weather is calm enough, you can see from thence, at the setting of the sun, the 'Hy Brysail'—the enchanted isle, the 'Tir-na-n'oge,' or land of eternal youth and beauty, to which death and sorrow never come, and where (so the old legend tells us) a hundred years of this mortal life pass swiftly as a single day. ”

“ In the eyes of those to whom the past furnishes a perspective more fascinating even than the promise of the future, the little isle adjacent, which is itself a finely marked basaltic cone, rising over a thousand feet high and well called “Holy Island,” is even more worthy of the visits of the reflecting scholar. It holds an attraction even greater, in human interest, at least, than the wonders of geology, or the numerous witnesses to antiquity in the form of upreared stones. ”

“ From the very beginning we are struck by the peculiarities—blessed, indeed—which show themselves, as in all other matters, in its reception of the truth. The island, compared with Europe, is small, it is true; but the heroism displayed by its inhabitants during so many ages, in support of the religion which they received so freely, so generously, and at once, in mind as well as heart, marks it out as worthy of a special account ”