A Voyage

1909     Breathing the stale and stuffy air     Of office or consulting room,     Our thoughts will wander back to where     We heard the low Atlantic boom,     And, creaming underneath our screw,     We watched the swirling waters break,     Silver filagrees on blue     Spreading fan-wise in our wake.     Cribbed within the city's fold,     Fettered to our daily round,     We'll conjure up the haze of gold     Which ringed the wide horizon round.     And still we'll break the sordid day     By fleeting visions far and fair,     The silver shield of Vigo Bay,     The long brown cliff of Finisterre.     Where once the Roman galley sped,     Or Moorish corsair spread his sail,     By wooded shore, or sunlit head,     By barren hill or sea-washed vale     We took our way. But we can swear,     That many countries we have scanned,     But never one that could compare     With our own island mother-land.     The dream is o'er. No more we view     The shores of Christian or of Turk,     But turning to our tasks anew,     We bend us to our wonted work.     But there will come to you and me     Some glimpse of spacious days gone by,     The wide, wide stretches of the sea,     The mighty curtain of the sky,