“Here is my journey's end, . . .

 And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.

Cold, the dull cold! What ails the sun,

  And takes the heart out of the day?

What makes the morning look so mean,

  The Common so forlorn and gray?

 

The wintry city's granite heart

  Beats on in iron mockery,

And like the roaming mountain rains,

  I hear the thresh of feet go by.

 

It is the lonely human surf

  Surging through alleys chill with grime,

The muttering churning ceaseless floe

  Adrift out of the North of time.

 

Fades, it all fades! I only see

  The poster with its reds and blues

Bidding the heart stand still to take

  Its desolating stab of news.

 

That intimate and magic name:

  "Dead in Samoa." . . . Cry your cries,

O city of the golden dome,

  Under the gray Atlantic skies!

 

But I have wander-biddings now.

  Far down the latitudes of sun,

An island mountain of the sea,

  Piercing the green and rosy zone,

 

Goes up into the wondrous day.

  And there the brown-limbed island men

Are bearing up for burial,

  Within the sun's departing ken,

 

The master of the roving kind.

  And there where time will set no mark

For his irrevocable rest,

  Under the spacious melting dark,

 

With all the nomad tented stars

  About him, they have laid him down

Above the crumbling of the sea,

  Beyond the turmoil of renown.

 

O all you hearts about the world

  In whom the truant gipsy blood,

Under the frost of this pale time,

  Sleeps like the daring sap and flood

 

That dream of April and reprieve!

  You whom the haunted vision drives,

Incredulous of home and ease,

  Perfection's lovers all your lives!

 

You whom the wander-spirit loves

  To lead by some forgotten clue

Forever vanishing beyond

  Horizon brinks forever new;

 

The road, unmarked, ordained, whereby

  Your brothers of the field and air

Before you, faithful blind and glad,

  Emerged from chaos pair by pair;

 

The road whereby you too must come,

  In the unvexed and fabled years,

Into the country of your dream,

  With all your knowledge in arrears!

 

You who can never quite forget

  Your glimpse of Beauty as she passed,

The well-head where her knee was pressed,

  The dew wherein her foot was cast;

 

O you who bid the paint and clay

  Be glorious when you are dead,

And fit the plangent words in rhyme

  Where the dark secret lurks unsaid;

 

You brethren of the light-heart guild,

  The mystic fellowcraft of joy,

Who tarry for the news of truth,

  And listen for some vast ahoy

 

Blown in from sea, who crowd the wharves

  With eager eyes that wait the ship

Whose foreign tongue may fill the world

  With wondrous tales from lip to lip;

 

Our restless loved adventurer,

  On secret orders come to him,

Has slipped his cable, cleared the reef,

  And melted on the white sea-rim.

 

O granite hills, go down in blue!

  And like green clouds in opal calms,

You anchored islands of the main,

  Float up your loom of feathery palms!

 

For deep within your dales, where lies

  A valiant earthling stark and dumb,

This savage undiscerning heart

  Is with the silent chiefs who come

 

To mourn their kin and bear him gifts,--

  Who kiss his hand, and take their place,

This last night he receives his friends,

  The journey-wonder on his face.

 

He "was not born for age." Ah no,

  For everlasting youth is his!

Part of the lyric of the earth

  With spring and leaf and blade he is.

 

'T will nevermore be April now

  But there will lurk a thought of him

At the street corners, gay with flowers

  From rainy valleys purple-dim.

 

O chiefs, you do not mourn alone!

  In that stern North where mystery broods,

Our mother grief has many sons

  Bred in those iron solitudes.

 

It does not help them, to have laid

  Their coil of lightning under seas;

They are as impotent as you

  To mend the loosened wrists and knees.

 

And yet how many a harvest night;

  When the great luminous meteors flare

Along the trenches of the dusk,

  The men who dwell beneath the Bear,

 

Seeing those vagrants of the sky

  Float through the deep beyond their hark,

Like Arabs through the wastes of air,--

  A flash, a dream, from dark to dark,--

 

Must feel the solemn large surmise:

  By a dim vast and perilous way

We sweep through undetermined time,

  Illumining this quench of clay,

 

A moment staunched, then forth again.

  Ah, not alone you climb the steep

To set your loving burden down

  Against the mighty knees of sleep.

 

With you we hold the sombre faith

  Where creeds are sown like rain at sea;

And leave the loveliest child of earth

  To slumber where he longed to be.

 

His fathers lit the dangerous coast

  To steer the daring merchant home;

His courage lights the darkling port

  Where every sea-worn sail must come.

 

And since he was the type of all

  That strain in us which still must fare,

The fleeting migrant of a day,

  Heart-high; outbound for otherwhere,

 

Now therefore, where the passing ships

  Hang on the edges of the noon,

And Northern liners trail their smoke

  Across the rising yellow moon,

 

Bound for his home, with shuddering screw

  That beats its strength out into speed,

Until the pacing watch descries

  On the sea-line a scarlet seed

 

Smoulder and kindle and set fire

  To the dark selvedge of the night,

The deep blue tapestry of stars,

  Then sheet the dome in pearly light,

 

There in perpetual tides of day,

  Where men may praise him and deplore,

The place of his lone grave shall be

  A seamark set forevermore,

 

High on a peak adrift with mist,

  And round whose bases, far beneath

The snow-white wheeling tropic birds,

  The emerald dragon breaks his teeth.