Sometimes I do not sleep. I lie awake silently, and feel gathered around. I wonder if I could be lonely if I tried. I touch the button by my pillow. I listen to great cities tending me. I have found all the earth paved, or carpeted, or hung, or thrilled through with my brother's thoughts for me. I cannot hide from love. He has hired oceans to do my errands. He has made the whole human race my house-servants. I lie in my berth for sheer joy, thinking of the strange peoples where the morning is, running to and fro for me, down under the dark. Next me, the great quiet throb of the engine--between me and infinite space--beating comfortably. I cannot help answering to it--this soft and mighty reaching out where I lie. My thoughts follow along the great twin shafts my brother holds me with. I wonder about them. I wish to do and share with them. Were I a spirit I would go Where the murmuring axles of the screws Along their whirling aisles Break through the hold, Where they lift the awful shining thews Of Thought, Of Trade, And strike the Sea Till the scar of London lies Miles and miles upon its breast Out in the West. As I lie and look out of my port-hole and watch the starlight stepping along the sea I let my soul go out and visit with it. The ship I am in--a little human beckoning between two deserts. Out through my port-hole I seem to see other ships, ghosts of great cities--an ocean of them, creeping through their still huge picture of the night, with their low hoarse whistles meeting one another, whispering to one another under the stars. "And they are all mine," I say, "hastening gently."