Travel and Horizons

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday three days after Bastille Day, yes it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner and I don’t know the people who will feed me

’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveler, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor.

Let observation with extensive view Survey mankind, from China to Peru. 2

Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.

listen: there’s a hell

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,

 

Where lies the land to which yon ship must go? Fresh as a lark mounting at break of day, Festively she puts forth in trim array.

The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.

Long is the way And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered far and wide after he had sacked Troy’s sacred city, and saw the towns of many men and knew their mind.

Perchance, coming generations will not abide the dissolution of the globe, but, availing themselves of future inventions in aerial locomotion, and the navigation of space, theentire race may migrate from the earth, tosettle some vacant and more western planet. . . . It took but little art, a simple applicationof natural laws, a canoe, a paddle, and a sail ofmatting, to people the isles of the Pacific, anda little more will people the shining isles ofspace.

Wayfarer, there is no way, you make the way as you go. As you go, you make the way and stopping to look behind, you see the path that your feet will never travel again. Wayfarer, there is no way— only foam trails in the sea.

 

Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home.

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

What is traveling? Changing your place? By no means! Traveling is changing your opinions and your prejudices.

I am become a name;

 

Railway termini. They are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.

 

Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honor’d of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravel’d world.

 

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.

At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay.

 

Florence she found perfectly sweet, Naples a dream, but very whiffy. In Rome one had simply to sit still and feel.

ESTRAGON : Charming spot. Inspiring prospects. Let’s go.

But fare forward, voyagers.