The Poetical Works of John Payne :: :: University of Virginia Library

OUT sails to the fresh breeze!
My heart
Pines for the open seas.
The soft moon flowers, like a dream-delight,
Over the full tide-flow.
Shake out the sails! Sweetheart, we will depart,
We will depart and sail the seas to-night,
Whilst on the foam that flees
The blithe breeze flutters and the weed floats slow,
The moon above us and the tide below.

Where shall we steer to-night?
The moon
Lies, like a lane of white,
Far out beyond our vision in the West,
Over the dreaming sea,
As if some goddess walked with silver shoon
Over the dimples of each white-winged crest.
Sweetheart, the way is bright:
Shall we trim sails and follow it till we
Win to some shimmering world of fantasy?

Folk hold we chase a dream;
They say
That the bright worlds, which beam
Beyond the setting and the dying day,
Are shows begotten of the air and light,
Delusions distance-woven for the sight,
Mere mirages, that seem
And flee before us with unceasing flight:
We lose our lives, they tell us, following
A vain, unreal thing.

333

'Twere better far to bide
On shore,
To delve the round earth's side
For diamonds and golden glittering store
And in the strife for wealth and worldly praise
Join, heaping up the treasure of the days
With great and goodly store
Of what men follow in the mortal ways;
Since, as they say, these only real are
And all things else unreal as a star.

What matter what they say?
We know
That which on dullards' way
They prate but of, as idiots do, who go,
Strange spells and magic words without comprize
Reciting, which, if spoken wizard-wise,
Would overthrow
The world and rend with ruin earth and skies:
We soar, whilst here below they herd like sheep;
We waken, whilst they sleep.

For them, dull life once o'er,
They lie
And rot for evermore;
There is no part of them but all must die,
Since all their thoughts are earthy as their dust,
Their spirits as their bodies rust in rust;
No hope have they, on high
To raise them, but for ever perish must:
What shall avail to lift them from the grave
Of all that here they crave?

With them what shall they bear
Away,
Into the nether air,
Of all the goods they garner night and day?
Shall they regild death's darkness with their gold?

334

Shall their wealth warm them in the utter cold,
Their honour cleave the clay?
Will the worm do them worship in the mould?
Nay, earth to earth and dust to dust must back;
With life, all else shall lack.

But we, whose kingdom is not of the earth,
Whose weal
No world of death and birth
Might work nor fill the yearnings that we feel,
Our visions overlasting life and death,
Our dreams that cease not with the 'scape of breath,
From us death cannot steal
The splendour and the fulness of our faith;
We bear with us into the realms of Night
The seeds of life and light.

Not of the dust our hope,
Our thought,
That soars beyond earth's scope.
If here it gain the glories not it sought,
Itself its warrant is that such things are,
That the bright visions, here from us afar
Which flee, are not for nought;
Nay, though it be beyond the topmost star,
Our dreams, that seem delusions, simple sooth
Are in the air of truth.

Since here our each desire,
Fulfilled,
Becomes a wasting fire,
A mocking counterfeit of what we willed,
Thrice happy they who chase some Golden Fleece,
Beyond man's wit, who seek without surcease
Some vision that they build,
Some lovely land of everlasting peace,
Who, after some divinest dream, o'erstray
The strands of night and day!

335

Come, then, launch out with me
And steer
Into the shoreless sea!
Shake out the sails and follow without fear
Into the distance and the golden West!
We yet shall sight the Islands of the Blest;
We yet the Hesperian Gardens of our quest
Shall compass, if not here,
In this our world of ravin and unrest,
Then in those lands of a serener air
Where truth alone is fair.