thrid,
Yet cannot, for the fog within Death's gate,--
This thing I know, that life, whatever its Source
Or Destiny, comes with an upward urge,
And that we cannot thwart its mighty surge,
But with a joy in strife must keep the course.

THE TRAIL FROM THE SEA

I took the trail to the wooded canyon,
The trail from the sea:
For I heard a calling in me,
A landward calling irresistible in me:--

_Have done with things of the sea--things of the soul;
Have done with waters that slip away from under you.
Have done with things faithless, things unfathomable and vain;
With the vast deeps of Time and the Hereafter._

_Have done with the fog-breather, the fog-beguiler;
With the foam of the never-resting.
Have done with tides and passions, tides and mysteries for a season.
Have done with infinite yearnings cast adrift on infinite vagueness--
With never a certain sail, never a rudder sure for guidance,
With never a compass-needle free of desire._

_For the ways of earth are good, as well as sea-ways,
The peaks of it as well as ports unknown.
Not only perils matter, stormy perils, over the pathless,
Not only the shoals that sink your ship of dreams.
Not only the phantom lure of far horizons,
Not only the windy guess at the goals of God._

_But morning matters, and dew upon the rose,
And noon, shadowless noon, and simple sheep on the pastures straying.
And toil matters, amid the accustomed corn,
And peace matters, the valley-spirit of peace, unprone to wander,
Unprone to pierce to the world's end--and past it.
And zephyrs matter, that never lift up a sail,
Save that of the thistle voyaging over the meadow._

_And the lark--oh--the sunny lark--as well as the songless petrel,
Who cries the foamy length of a thousand leagues.
And silence matters, silence free of all surging,
Silence, the spirit of happiness and home._

_And oh how much the laugh of a child matters:
More than the green of an island suddenly lit by sun at dawn.
And friends, the greetings of friends, how they matter:
More than ships that meet and fling a wild ahoy and pass,
On any alien tides however enchanted.
And the face of love, the evening face of love, at a window waiting,
Shall ever a kindled Light on any long-unlifting shore,
Shall ever a Harbor Light like that lig