Reuben and Other Poems/Landlock'd
LANDLOCK’D
Here, where beyond yon straight-ruled rim
Of inland pasture high,
Rich with some latent meaning swim
Long lines of purple sky:
What ails my soul? Where all is well
Her quietude what jars?
Why raves she round her prison-cell
And battles at the bars?
“O, swift my longing oversprings
Yon shore’s last dip and rise!
O, well I know, beneath the wings
Of yon descending skies
Who waits! whose widely opening arms
Summon, to set me free!”
“O fool! that a delusion charms,
Yonder is not the sea.
“Field upon field yon sky o’erstoops
Ere to the sea it come.”
—Like a struck child, she quails, she droops,
She cowers, and is dumb.
“Nay, could these eyes, thy windows, yield
The view thy clamour craves:
Yon same sky, deepening o’er a field,
A widening field, of waves:
“Till, thro’ the mystic lip-to-lip
Of furthest sky and sea
The elusive limit soft should slip
Into Infinity:
“Say, O my soul! would’st lie content
Before that vision vast?
Thy restless longing wholly spent,
Thy passion still’d, at last?
“No! Thine inevitable wail
Too duly I divine.
Would that I were a ship, to sail
Past yon horizon-line!
“Would, from this body, as a bird
From the obdurate cliff
Winging at length her way deferr'd,
Launch'd were mine aery skiff!
“Then would I range, with unstopp'd speed,
Space, and the whole world wide.
Would then this wild rebellious need
Cease, being satisfied?”
Her quick wings beat, her cage of clay
Quivers—till “Nay!” she mourns—
“I should but win, for all my way,
New limits, other bournes!
“How do ye straiten, stepdame Earth
An alien world,” she saith,
Me, that beyond all seas and birth,
Thou, wilt Thou loose me—Death?”