Let it be storm or calm, so we be sailing. I long have wished to voyage into mid sea, To give my senses rest from wondering On this perplexed grammar of the land Written in men and women, the strange trees, Herbs, and those things so like to souls, the beasts. My wilful senses will keep perilously Employed with these my brain, and weary it Still to be asking. But on the high seas Such throng'd reality is left behind,-- Only vast air and water, and the hue That always seems like special news of God. Surely 'tis half way to eternity To go where only size and colour live; And I could purify my mind from all Worldly amazement by imagining Beyond my senses into God's great Heaven, If I were in mid sea. I have dreamed of this. Wondrous too, I think, to sail at night, While shoals of moonlight flickers dance beside, Like swimming glee of fishes scaled in gold, Curvetting in thwart bounds over the swell; The perceiving flesh, in bliss of such a beauty, Must sure feel fine as spiritual sight.-- Moods have been on me, too, when I would be Sailing recklessly through wild darkness, where Gigantic whispers of a harassed sea Fill the whole world of air, and I stand up To breast the danger of the loosen'd sky, And feel my immortality like music,-- Yea, I alone in the broken world, firm things All gone to monstrous flurry, knowing myself An indestructible word spoken by God.-- This is a small, small boat? Captain: Small is nothing, A bucket will do, so it know how to ride Top upward: cleverness is the thing in boats. And I wish this were cleverer: she goes crank At times just when she should go sober. But what? Boats are but girls for whimsies: men Must let them have their freaks. Thomas: Have you good skill In seamanship? Captain: Well, I am not drowned yet, Though I'm a grey man and have been at sea Longer than you've been walking. My old sight Can tell Mizar from Alcor still. Thomas: Ay, so; Doubtless you'll bring me safe to India. But being there--tell me now of the land: How use they strangers there? Captain: Queerly, sometimes. If the king's moody, and tired of feeling nerves Mildly made happy with soft jewel of silk, Odours and wines and slim lascivious girls, And yearns for sharper thrills to pierce his brain, He often finds a stranger handy then. Thomas: Why, what do you mean? Captain: There was a merchant came To Travancore, and could not speak our talk; And, it chanced, he was brought before the throne Just when the king was weary of sweet pleasures. So, to better his tongue, a rope was bent Beneath his oxters, up he was hauled, and fire Let singe the soles of his feet, until his legs Wriggled like frying eels; then the king's dogs Were set to hunt the hirpling man. The king Laught greatly and cried, 'But give the dogs words they know, And they'll be tame.'--Have you the Indian speech? Thomas: Not yet: it will be given me, I trust.