Feet that have learned to leap,
And a spirit that longs to fly.
That’s what I wish, dear brother, to-day,
Said the tramp.
THE SUN SEES EVERYTHING
XII. GOING WEST
We love inspirational phrases such as to “go West” which sprang on to men’s lips in the Great War, and was a way of saying “to die,” which was startlingly poetic, seeing that it came from the soul of those masses usually admitted to be so vulgar. “He’s gone West,” men said with a hushed voice, meaning that like so many who had passed before, he had gone—to another world, to beyond the setting sun. The phrase was not current among the American soldiers, but I have heard of an equally wonderful expression used by the mountaineers, who said: “He has crossed the Great Divide.”
My mind is inevitably drawn to these thoughts as we face so often the setting sun, as we cross the pinnacles of our momentary aspirations, the passes, the divides which separate sky from sky and valley from valley.
Lindsay is also constantly enwrapped by the romance of Going West—the historic and poetic Western movement which has pulsated humanity since the hordes and their caravans stampeded across Asia in the days which are almost before history. What was it, what is it that hypnotises us—is it not the sun which, rising in the morning, calls all his children after him all day and bids them follow when at last he plunges into night and nothingness?