From the New World - Sonnet 55

If time would sail the ocean ever on,

Would I then heed the call to climb aboard

And journey with it? Would the massing hoard

Of my own yearnings and my tears upon

The sea unfolding flicker and be gone?

I cannot linger in this endly place

And let the one thing dangling in my face

To wither and, at worst, to carry on.

Yea, there the trial, there the tempest comes

To test me: if I were to join the deep,

Would I find rest, and would my spirit sleep?

Or would I, currents raging to the drums,

Have found the best, the reason then to fight

For when the new sun rises from the night?