Santa Barbara - Heavenly Fair

SANTA BARBARA

Was ever day more heavenly fair than this?

More perfect in the subtly woven charm

Of gracious beauty,

Blue without a cloud?

The sky o'erspans the blue unruffled sea,

The long line of the mountains melts away

Into the haze as dreams will merge in dreams,

And the breeze comes, in little tender puffs,

Balmy, and soft, and sweet, as if it blew

From lotus islands in far summer seas.

   ~William Henry Hudson, The Sphinx and Other Poems

California the Beautiful, by Paul Elder, 1911