Invitation to the Voyage
(A New Version)
Alfred Noyes
A rambling cherry-petalled stream;
A bridge of pale bamboo;
A path that seemed a twisted dream
Where everything came true;
A crimson-lanterned garden-house
With jutting eaves below the boughs;
The slant-eyed elves in blue
With soft slip-slapping heels and toes
Dancing before the Daimyōs:
“And is it Old Japan,” you cry
“That half-remembered place”—
I see beneath an English sky
A child with brooding face.
The curious realm he chose to build
And paint with any hues he willed
Is all I strive to trace,
Where odds and ends of memory smile
Like bits of heaven, through clouds awhile.
And some for charts and maps would call,
But here, beside the fire,
The kakemono on the wall
Is all that we require.
A chanty piped by bosun Lear
May float around us while we steer
Our hearts to their desire—
The Nonsense Land beyond the sun
Where West and East, at last, are one.
Then let the rigging hum the tales
That Tusitala[[1]] told
When first we spread our purple sails
In quest of pirate gold;
For, though he waved us all good-bye
Beneath the deep Samoan sky,
His heart was blithe and bold,
And hailed across a darker main
The shadowy hills of home again.
So we, who now adventure far
Beyond the singing foam,
May see, in every dipping star,
The harbour lights of home;
And, finding still, as all have found,
That every ship is homeward bound,
(For none could ever roam
A sea too wide for heaven to span)
Sail on—sail on—to Old Japan.
[1]. Robert Louis Stevenson.