the water lilies pearling the lochs ruffled in the tugging of the wind the sunlight comes wild and strong bunches of blown gusts like daffodils this northernness novembered in a moment driven slate-grey in a suddenness of storm yet this is the place they came to find an island thin to the divine on the edge of the world a beauty brittle as a bird's egg larks spinning songs out of sheer sky orchids blowing in hidden glens and sometimes, just sometimes the glory of God in the morning
The Papar, sixth-century hermits and Celtic Christian monks, sought the divine in the furthest flung landfalls of the Hebrides. It may be they reached Iceland itself.
This poem comes from Kenneth Steven's sequence on the Papar, A Song among the Stones.