Where lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.
And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.
A. H. Clough (Songs in Absence)
The Ship is the ship of life. The first line is taken from Wordsworth’s sonnet, “Where lies the land to which yon Ship must go.”
The brooding East with awe beheld
Her impious younger world.
The Roman tempest swell’d and swell’d,