Just as dry summers pant for the first rain,
So thou art thirsty for a happy home
And for a life remote, like hermit's prayer,
A corner of forgetting and of love.
And thirsty for the ship upon the sea
That ever onward sails with birds and sea-things,
Filling its life with our great planet's light.
But unto thee both ship and home said: "No!
"Look neither for the happiness remote
That never moves, nor for the life that ever finds
In each new land and harbor a new soul!
"Only the panting of a toiling slave
For thee! Drag in the market place thy body's
Nakedness, strange to the strangers and thine own!"
_1896._