Collected Poems of Laurence Binyon

Whither is she gone, wing'd by the evening airs,
Yon sail that draws the last of light afar,
On the sea-verge alone, despising other cares
Than her own errand and her guiding star?
She leaves the safe land, leaves the roofs, and the long roads
Travelling the hills to end for each at his own hearth.
She leaves the silence under slowly-darkening elms,
The friendly human voices, smell of dew and dust,
And generations of men asleep in the old earth.
Between two solitudes she glides and fades,
And round us falls the darkness she invades.

Waters empty and outcast, O barren waters!
What have your wastes to do
With the earth-treader, the earth-tiller; this frail
Body of man; the sower, whom the green shoot gladdens;
Hewer of trees; the builder, who houses him from the bleak winds,
And whom awaits at last long peace beneath the grass
In soil his fathers knew?
What shall he hope for from your careless desolation,
Lion-indolence, or cold roar of your risen wrath?
What sows he in your furrows, or what fruit gathers
But hazard, loss, and his own hard courage? ...
Yon sail goes like a spirit seeking you.

I heard a trumpet from beyond the moon,
Piercing ice-blue gulfs of air,
Cry down the secret waters of the world,
Under the far sea-streams, to summon there
The foundered ships, the splendid ships, the lost ships.

329

In their ribb'd ruin and age-long sleep they heard,
Where each had found her shadowy burial-bed,
Clutched in blind reef, shoal-choked or shingle-bound;
Heard from betraying isles and capes of dread
In corners of all oceans, where the light
Gropes faltering over their spilt merchandize:
And shapes at last were stirred
On glimmerless abysses' oozy floors
Known to the dark fins only and drowned eyes;—
Sunk out of memory, they that glided forth
Bound from cold rivers to the tropic shores,
Or questing up the white gloom of the North,
Or shattered in the glory of old wars,
The laden ships, the gallant ships, the lost ships!

I saw them clouding up over the verge,
Ghosts that arose out of an unknown grave,
Strange to the buoyant seas that young they rode upon
And strange to the idle glitter of the wave.
Magically re-builded, rigged and manned,
They stole in their slow beauty toward the land.
Mariners, O mariners!
I heard a voice cry; Home, come home!
Here is the rain-fresh earth; leaf-changing seasons; here
Spring the flowers; and here, older than memory, peace
Tastes on the air sweet as honey in the honey-comb.
Smells not the hearth-smoke better than spices of India?
Are not children's kisses dearer than ivory and pearls?
And sleep in the hill kinder than nameless water
And the cold, wandering foam?
Dear are the names of home, I heard a far voice answer,
Pleasant the tilled valley, the flocks and farms; and sweet
The hum in cities of men, and words of our own kin.

330

But we have tasted wild fruit, listened to strange music;
And all shores of the earth are but as doors of an inn;
We knocked at the doors, and slept; to arise at dawn and go.
We spilt blood for gold, trafficked in costly cargoes,
But knew in the end it was not these we sailed to win;
Only a wider sea; room for the winds to blow,
And a world to wander in.

University of Virginia Library

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