Have we not marked Earth’s limits, followed its long ways round,
Charted our island world, and seen how the measureless deep
Sunders it, holds it remote, that still in our hearts we keep
A faith in a path that links our shores with a shore unfound?
No quest the venturer waits, no world have we to explore;
But still the voices that called us far over the lands and seas
Whisper of stranger countries and lonelier deeps than these,
In the wind on the hill, and the reeds on the lake, and the wave
on the shore.
Never beyond our Earth shall the venturer find a guide:
From the golden light of the stars, but not from the stars, a clue
May fall to the Earth; and the rose of eve and the noonday blue
Veil with celestial beauty the fathomless deeps they hide.
They have their bounds those deeps, and the ways that end are long;
But the soul seeks not for an end,--its infinite paths are near;
Over its unknown seas by the light of a dream we steer,
Through its enchanted isles we sail on an ancient song.
Here, where a man and a maid in the dusk of the evening meet,
Here, where a grave is green and the larks are singing above,
The secret of life everlasting is held in a name that we love,
And the paths of the infinite gleam through the flowers that
grow at our feet.