Inland Voyage

ON this chill, icebound day, the heath
Which summer sprinkles with children, coming and going
With shouts and laughter, cowers beneath
A wind that bends the dry grasses, bitterly blowing
From some far, boreal shore. — Though we should range
Hundreds of leagues across the northern sea,
We scarce should find a wintry land more strange
Than this transmuted land, where we
Must tread the withered tussocks warily, fearing
The thick black ooze beneath the yellow grass,
Must seek a new, untrodden pathway, hearing
The creak of ice that splinters as we pass. Nor, traveling far through space and time,
In search of loneliness, should we discover
Waters more desolate than these,
On whose forlorn, deserted shores the plover
Cry their sad cry, and fallen trees
Are slowly swallowed in primeval slime.

Before the ship sets sail, the harbor’s won —
For in the country of the mind, the end
Takes no account of means. A trick of sun,
Threading the stony labyrinths, may lend
No less enchantment to a city street
Than the frescoed gold that shimmers
In a Tuscan chapel, where the tapers bend
With languor in the noonday heat,
And through the open door the trellised vine-tree glimmers.

The north has mantled plain and hill with snows,
The south has sown her valleys with the rose:
Each has its several charm, to snare
The heart of man — a charm compounded
Of sun and shadow, odors on the air,
Dark pierced with light, and light surrounded
With zones of dark. — And where
A sudden symphony of tone and line
Awakes an echo in the soul,
Where a chance scent, a chiming bell, combine
To build the world anew — the goal
Is reached, although the ship still rides
In idleness on the returning tides.