Travel and Horizons

I rang them up while touring Timbucktoo, Those bosom chums to whom you’re known as “Who?”

 

A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

 

And o’er the hills and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, across the day, Through all the world she followed him.

 

Once more upon the waters, yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider!

He turn’d him right and round about Upon the Irish shore; And gae his bridle reins a shake, With adieu forevermore, And adieu forevermore!

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, Or by the lazy Scheldt, or wandering Po.

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

 

And the stately ships go on

 

The Road goes ever on and on

 

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.

Come up with me, American love. Kiss these secret stones with me. The torrential silver of the Urubamba makes the pollen fly to its golden cup. The hollow of the bindweed’s maze, the petrified plant, the inflexible garland, soar above the silence of these mountain coffers.

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free; We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.

A thousand-mile journey starts under your feet.

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink

 

Life is a great adventure, or it is nothing.

Eliza made her desperate retreat across the river just in the dusk of twilight. The gray mist ofevening, rising slowly from the river, enveloped her as she disappeared up the bank, and theswollen current and floundering masses of icepresented a hopeless barrier between her andher pursuer.

We were the first that found that famous country: We marched by a king’s name: we crossed the sierras: Unknown hardships we suffered: hunger.

 

What is that sad, dark island?—It is Cythera, They tell us, a country famous in song, Banal Eldorado of all the old bachelors. Look! after all, it is a poor land! 8

Come, my friends. ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

 

Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be?

I long for Europe of the ancient parapets. 8

I have discovered that most of the beauties of travel are due to the strange hours we keep to see them.

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’tis early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.

 

Little by little, one travels far. J. R. R.