I
The world is equal to the child's desire
Who plays with pictures by his nursery fire--
How vast the world by lamplight seems! How small
When memory's eyes look back, remembering all!--
One morning we set forth with thoughts aflame,
Or heart o'erladen with desire or shame;
And cradle, to the song of surge and breeze,
Our own infinity on the finite seas.
Some flee the memory of their childhood's home;
And others flee their fatherland; and some,
Star-gazers drowned within a woman's eyes,
Flee from the tyrant Circe's witcheries;
And, lest they still be changed to beasts, take flight
For the embrasured heavens, and space, and light,
Till one by one the stains her kisses made
In biting cold and burning sunlight fade.
But the true voyagers are they who part
From all they love because a wandering heart
Drives them to fly the Fate they cannot fly;
Whose call is ever "On!"--they know not why.
Their thoughts are like the clouds that veil a star
They dream of change as warriors dream of war;
And strange wild wishes never twice the same:
Desires no mortal man can give a name.