were sailing toward impossible bournes--characters which in every age
have ventured all the bright capital of life in vague speculations and
romantic dreams? What could it be but the ship that haunts the sea for
ever, and, with all sails set, drives onward before a ceaseless gale,
and is not hailed, nor ever comes to port?

I know the ship is always full; I know the gray-beard still watches at
the prow for the lost Atlantis, and still the alchemist believes that
Eldorado is at hand. Upon his aimless quest, the dotard still asks
where he is going, and the pale youth knows that he shall never fly
himself. Yet they would gladly renounce that wild chase and the dear
dreams of years, could they find what I have never lost. They were
ready to follow the poet home, if he would have told them where it
lay.

I know where it lies. I breathe the soft air of the purple uplands
which they shall never tread. I hear the sweet music of the voices
they long for in vain. I am no traveller; my only voyage is to the
office and home again. William and Christopher, John and Charles sail
to Europe and the South, but I defy their romantic distances. When the
spring comes and the flowers blow, I drift through the year belted
with summer and with spice.

With the changing months I keep high carnival in all the zones. I sit
at home and walk with Prue, and if the sun that stirs the sap quickens
also the wish to wander, I remember my fellow-voyagers on that
romantic craft, and looking round upon my peaceful room, and pressing
more closely the arm of Prue, I feel that I have reached the port for
which they hopelessly sailed. And when winds blow fiercely and the
night-storm rages, and the thought of lost mariners and of perilous