THE VOYAGE
by Washington Irving
Ships, ships, I will descrie you
Amidst the main,
I will come and try you,
What you are protecting,
And projecting,
What's your end and aim.
One goes abroad for merchandise and trading,Another stays to keep his country from invading,A third is coming home with rich and wealthy lading.
Halloo! my fancie, whither wilt thou go?
OLD POEM.
TO AN American visiting Europe, the long voyage he has to make is anexcellent preparative. The temporary absence of worldly scenes andemployments produces a state of mind peculiarly fitted to receivenew and vivid impressions. The vast space of waters that separates thehemispheres is like a blank page in existence. There is no gradualtransition, by which, as in Europe, the features and population of onecountry blend almost imperceptibly with those of another. From themoment you lose sight of the land you have left all is vacancy untilyou step on the opposite shore, and are launched at once into thebustle and novelties of another world.
In travelling by land there is a continuity of scene and a connectedsuccession of persons and incidents, that carry on the story oflife, and lessen the effect of absence and separation. We drag, itis true, "a lengthening chain," at each remove of our pilgrimage;but the chain is unbroken: we can trace it back link by link; and wefeel that the last still grapples us to home. But a wide sea voyagesevers us at once. It makes us conscious of being cast loose fromthe secure anchorage of settled life, and sent adrift upon adoubtful world. It interposes a gulf, not merely imaginary, butreal, between us and our homes- a gulf subject to tempest, and fear,and uncertainty, rendering distance palpable, and return precarious.
Such, at least, was the case with myself. As I saw the last blueline of my native land fade away like a cloud in the horizon, itseemed as if I had closed one volume of the world and its concerns,and had time for meditation, before I opened another. That land,too, now vanishing from my view, which contained all most dear to mein life; what vicissitudes might occur in it- what changes mighttake place in me, before I should visit it again! Who can tell, whenhe sets forth to wander, whither he may be driven by the uncertaincurrents of existence; or when he may return; or whether it may everbe his lot to revisit the scenes of his childhood?
I said that at sea all is vacancy; I should correct theexpression. To one given to day-dreaming, and fond of losing himselfin reveries, a sea voyage is full of subjects for meditation; but thenthey are the wonders of the deep, and of the air, and rather tend toabstract the mind from worldly themes. I delighted to loll over thequarter-railing, or climb to the main-top, of a calm day, and muse forhours together on the tranquil bosom of a summer's sea; to gaze uponthe piles of golden clouds just peering above the horizon, fancythem some fairy realms, and people them with a creation of my own;- towatch the gentle undulating billows, rolling their silver volumes,as if to die away on those happy shores.
There was a delicious sensation of mingled security and awe withwhich I looked down from my giddy height, on the monsters of thedeep at their uncouth gambols. Shoals of porpoises tumbling aboutthe bow of the ship; the grampus slowly heaving his huge form abovethe surface; or the ravenous shark, darting, like a spectre, throughthe blue waters. My imagination would conjure up all that I hadheard or read of the watery world beneath me; of the finny herdsthat roam its fathomless valleys; of the shapeless monsters thatlurk among the very foundations of the earth; and of those wildphantasms that swell the tales of fishermen and sailors.
Sometimes a distant sail, gliding along the edge of the ocean, wouldbe another theme of idle speculation. How interesting this fragment ofa world, hastening to rejoin the great mass of existence! What aglorious monument of human invention; which has in a mannertriumphed over wind and wave; has brought the ends of the world intocommunion; has established an interchange of blessings, pouring intothe sterile regions of the north all the luxuries of the south; hasdiffused the light of knowledge and the charities of cultivatedlife; and has thus bound together those scattered portions of thehuman race, between which nature seemed to have thrown aninsurmountable barrier.