Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861)

Extracts from Songs in Absence: Where Lies the Land?

WHERE lies the land to which the ship would go?

Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from? Away,

Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

On sunny noons upon the deck’s smooth face,

Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace;

Or, o’er the stern reclining, watch below

The foaming wake far widening as we go.

On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave,

How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!

The dripping sailor on the reeling mast

Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?

Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from? Away,

Far, far behind, is all that they can say.