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Title: The Trail From The Sea
Author: Cale Young Rice [
More Titles by Rice]
I took the trail to the wooded canyon,
The trail from the sea:
For I heard a calling in me,
A landward calling irresistible in me:--
Have done with things of the sea--things of the soul;
Have done with waters that slip away from under you.
Have done with things faithless, things unfathomable and vain;
With the vast deeps of Time and the Hereafter.
Have done with the fog-breather, the fog-beguiler;
With the foam of the never-resting.
Have done with tides and passions, tides and mysteries for a season.
Have done with infinite yearnings cast adrift on infinite vagueness--
With never a certain sail, never a rudder sure for guidance,
With never a compass-needle free of desire.
For the ways of earth are good, as well as sea-ways,
The peaks of it as well as ports unknown.
Not only perils matter, stormy perils, over the pathless,
Not only the shoals that sink your ship of dreams.
Not only the phantom lure of far horizons,
Not only the windy guess at the goals of God.
But morning matters, and dew upon the rose,
And noon, shadowless noon, and simple sheep on the pastures straying.
And toil matters, amid the accustomed corn,
And peace matters, the valley-spirit of peace, unprone to wander,
Unprone to pierce to the world's end--and past it.
And zephyrs matter, that never lift up a sail,
Save that of the thistle voyaging over the meadow.
And the lark--oh--the sunny lark--as well as the songless petrel,
Who cries the foamy length of a thousand leagues.
And silence matters, silence free of all surging,
Silence, the spirit of happiness and home.
And oh how much the laugh of a child matters:
More than the green of an island suddenly lit by sun at dawn.
And friends, the greetings of friends, how they matter:
More than ships that meet and fling a wild ahoy and pass,
On any alien tides however enchanted.
And the face of love, the evening face of love, at a window waiting,
Shall ever a kindled Light on any long-unlifting shore,
Shall ever a Harbor Light like that light matter?
Ah no! so enough of the sea and the soul for a season.
Too long followed they leave life as a dream,
Reality as a mirage when port is made.
"Ever in sight of the human," is the helm-word of the wisest,
For earth is not earth to one upon the flood of infinity;
To the eye, then, it is but an atom-star, adrift, and oh,
No longer warm with the beating of countless hearts.
No longer warm with the human throb--the simple breath of today,
With yester-hours or the near dreams of to-morrow.
No longer rich with the little innumerous blooms of brief delights,
Nor all divinely drenched with sympathy.
No longer green with the humble grass of duties that must grow,
To clothe it against desert aridity.
No longer zoned with the air of hope, no longer large with faith--
No longer heaven enough--if Heaven fails us!
[The end]
Cale Young Rice's poem: Trail From The Sea
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