“Insularum Ocelle”

Sark, fairer than aught in the world that the lit skies cover, Laughs inly behind her cliffs, and the seafarers mark As a shrine where the sunlight serves, though the blown clouds hover, Sark.
We mourn, for love of a song that outsang the lark, That nought so lovely beholden of Sirmio's lover Made glad in Propontis the flight of his Pontic bark.
Here earth lies lordly, triumphal as heaven is above her, And splendid and strange as the sea that upbears as an ark, As a sign for the rapture of storm-spent eyes to discover, Sark.

Commentary

The title is from Catullus and means something like jewel or little eye of the islands. Catullus was writing about Sirmio, a promontory at the southern end of Lake Garda, in northern Italy. Swinburne's use of Propontis and the “Pontic bark” allude to Catullus 4 about an old and well-traveled ship. Catullus' poem includes the line: Propontida trucemve Ponticum sinum..
In this small roundel, Swinburne serves up a number of images of his beloved Sark, as a paradise hidden behind her cliffs, as an altar or shrine, as an ark born aloft by the sea, and As a sign.