Classic Poem

O master of all seamen and all seas,
Who first dared set a sail toward sunset shores,
Not as Odysseus sailed thou, for the love
Of blue sea water, nor of the sweet sound
Of surges smiting on thy vessel's prow;
Nor of the soft white bosom of thy sail
Swelling against blue heaven. Unto thee
The waters were but wastes that lay between
Thee and thy prize. The stars of heaven, guides
That pointed toward the ever-widening west.
Prophet wer't thou, who saw in things that were
Only the future, and thy soul was set
To journey toward the west, like kings of old
Who followed from the east a western star.
Most happy of all bards wert thou, who saw
Thy fancies take upon them form and shape
Thy realized ideal in the line
Of low, blue, coast that rose before thine eyes
At last, as it had done so oft in sleep,
In those low lengths of sunlit land that stretched
Into the smoking sunset. Thou whose soul
Saw what thine eyes, though fain, were weak to see;
Upon the swift wings of thy dreams, a world
Fast followed and thou didst create the west;
Even as He, the All-Begetting, once,
Sleeping his sleep of the eternities,
Was restless, stirred uneasily in space.
And into being dreamed the universe.