(Outward Bound) <br />AWAY, away she plunges <br />With her white sails o’er her spread, <br />Like the summer clouds that gather <br />On some hill’s piny head; <br />Still away she plunges rampant <br />Like a lion roused to wrath, <br />And the proud wave lies humbled <br />I’ the track of her path. <br /> <br />Ye ho! my gallant sailors <br />Wear her head from off the land: <br />As his steed obeys the Arab <br />How she gives to the hand! <br />And now like a soul the world forsaking, <br />She leaves the coast behind, <br />And the main is her wide dwelling <br />And her spouse is the wind. <br /> <br />Then pledge we a full measure <br />To the friends we left to-day, <br />Whose kind wishes hover o’er us <br />On our watery way: <br />Where diurnally remind us <br />Shall the same bright-brimming rite <br />Of the eyes that yearned blessings <br />When last we knew their light! <br />. . . . . <br />The leaf-glancing boughs of the o’erdoming trees <br />Now seem in wild dance to the pipe of the breeze <br />As clashing and clasping in merry despite <br />They mass into shadow or quiver in light, <br />When cut by their motion the slanting moonbeam <br />Falls sifted like coin on the floor of the stream <br />That murmurs thereby like a voice in a dream, <br />Save when the breeze straining in lengthen’d escape <br />Holds open their sprays for a steadier escape, <br />Then too bright fragment of Night’s ripest blue <br />Relieving the leaf-work come transiently through, <br />And broad stars seem glowing as seen amid these <br />Like apples of fire in the tops of the trees!<br /><br />Charles Harpur<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-master-mariner-s-song/
