Too sensitively nerved to bear
Domestication, O my friends
On a perpetual change of air
Whose sole stability depends,
By what phenomenal emotion,
Alas, is each of us obsessed
That travel, flight, and ceaseless motion
Must keep us in a state of rest?
Schooled by the new gymnastic Muse
In barbarous academies,
The rifle and the running noose
Conferred upon us their degrees,
To play our more precarious parts
Trapezed above the rolling decks
Or in the high equestrian arts
To graduate with broken necks.
Yet I could wish, before I perish,
To make my peace with God above
Or, like a millionaire, to cherish
My purse with soft marsupial love,
Or like a poet woo the moon,
Riding an arm-chair for my steed,
And with a flashing pen harpoon
Terrific metaphors of speed—
Speed, motion, flight!—the last hosanna
Of routed angels: sword that fights
The coward free: unfailing manna
Of earth’s fastidious Israelites!
Valise of invalids on tour:
Refuge of refugees in flight:
Home of the homeless: sinecure
Of hunted thieves at dead of night.
Nirvana of the record-breakers,
Heaven in which our senses swim,
Aviary of aviators
And poultry-run of seraphim!
Safari to the unexplored
With rough first-aid for Cupid’s darts,
Perambulator of the Bored
And ambulance of broken hearts!
Deranger of the intellects
Of those who flee before a curse,
Fixative of blurred effects,
And laxative of minor verse!
Mecca of all mechanic progress:
Destination, course, and goal
Of those who’ve none: Circean Ogress
Whose snouted trophy is my soul!
Tourist, who leaves with ten-league boots
His spoor of Castles down the Rhine:
Smoker of immense cheroots—
The funnels of the Cunard Line!
Of cranks, the boomerang and waddy:
Of rogues, the assegai and kerry:
Black Maria to the Body,
To the Soul a Stygian ferry!
Pope of the gypsies: sole religion
Of those who sail with every breeze:
The Son, the Father, and the Pigeon
To wandering aborigines!
To Thee our heathen hymns are hurled
From where we wander in the clouds—
Sonatas on the fog-horn skirled,
The pibroch of the creaking shrouds.
Lead, kindly ignis fatuus, far
Amid the world’s encircling gloom:
In my last trek be thou the star
To whom I hitch my disselboom.
Far from the famed memorial arch
Towards a lonely grave I come,
My heart in its funereal march
Goes beating like a muffled drum,
Yet lest when midnight winds are loud
I should not see the way to go,
Let every gross proverbial cloud
Its shabby silver lining show:
And you shall lend me, if you please,
That in the mode I may appear,
Your shirt, tormented Hercules!
Laocoön! your bandolier.