The Coast of Bohemia

Excerpt

THE COAST OF BOHEMIA

There is a land not charted on all charts;
Though many mariners have touched its coast,
Who far adventuring in those distant parts,
Meet ship-wreck there and are forever lost;
Or if they e'er return, are soon once more
Borne far away by hunger for that magic shore.

Its mystic mountains on the horizon piled,
Some mariners have glimpsed when driven far
Out of life's measured course by tempests wild,
Or lured therefrom by the erratic star
They chose as pilot, till their errant guide
Drew them resistlessly within its witching tide.

For oft, they tell, who know its sapphire strand
The golden haze enfolding it hangs low,
And those who careless steer may miss the land,
Embosomed in the sunset's purple glow,
Its lights mistaken for the evening stars,
Its music for the surf-beat on its golden bars.

Young Jason found it when he dauntless sought
The golden fleece by Colchis' perilous stream,
And in his track full many an argonaut
Hath found the rare fleece of his golden dream,
And at the last, Ulysses-like, surcease
From Sorrow's dole and Labor's heavy prease.

One voyager charted it for every age,
From azure rim to starry mountain core.
A nameless player on the World's great stage,
He spread his sails, adventured to that shore
And reared a pharos with his art sublime,
Like Ilion's song-wrought towers, to beacon every clime.

The great adventurers reached it when they brake
Columbus-led into the unknown West,
And those who followed in their shining wake,
But left no trace of where their keels have pressed;
Yet have through stress of storm and tempests' rage
Won by his quenchless light a happy anchorage.

There rest the heroes of lost causes lorn,
On their calm brows more fadeless chaplets far
Than all their conquerors' could e'er adorn,
When shone effulgent Fame's ascendant star;
There fallen patriots reap the glorious prize
Of deathless memory of their precious sacrifice.

There many a dream-faced maid and matron dwells,
From Argive Helen on through gliding time;
There drink the poets draughts from crystal wells,
And choir high music to their harps sublime:
And there the great philosophers discourse
Divine Philosophy in due and tranquil course.

There not alone the great and lofty sing;
But silent poets too find there the song
They only sang in dreams when wandering
Amazed and lost amid the earthly throng;
Their hearts unfettered all from worldly fears.
Attuned to meet the spacious music of the spheres:

Gray, wrinkled men, the sea-salt in their hair,
Their eyes set deep with peering through the gloom,
Their voices low with speaking ever, where
The surges break beneath the mountains' loom;
But deep within their yearning, burning eyes
The light reflected ever from those radiant skies.

There fadeless Youth, unknowing of annoy,
Walks aye with changeless Love; and Sorrow there
Is but a memory to hallow Joy,
With chastened Happiness so deep and rare,
Well-nigh the Heart aches with its rich content,
And Hope with full fruition evermore is blent.

Constant Penelope, her web complete,
Rests there content at last and smiling down
On worn Ulysses basking at her feet;
Calm Beatrice wears joyously the crown
Bestowed by exiled Dante in his grief,
And Laura, kind, gives Petrarch's tuneful heart relief....