A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass

The Poet

          What instinct forces man to journey on,
           Urged by a longing blind but dominant!
           Nothing he sees can hold him, nothing daunt
          His never failing eagerness.  The sun
          Setting in splendour every night has won
           His vassalage; those towers flamboyant
           Of airy cloudland palaces now haunt
          His daylight wanderings.  Forever done
          With simple joys and quiet happiness
           He guards the vision of the sunset sky;
          Though faint with weariness he must possess
           Some fragment of the sunset's majesty;
          He spurns life's human friendships to profess
           Life's loneliness of dreaming ecstasy.