Explore "To Ned (Sea Pieces)" by Herman Melville on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Where is the world we roved, Ned Bunn?
Hollows thereof lay rich in shade / By voyagers old inviolate thrown / Ere Paul Pry cruised with Pelf and Trade.
To us old lads some thoughts come home / Who roamed a world young lads no more shall roam.
Nor less the satiate year impends / When, wearying of routine-resorts, / The pleasure-hunter shall break loose, / Ned, for our Pantheistic ports: - / Marquesas and glenned isles that be / Authentic Edens in a Pagan sea.
The charm of scenes untried shall lure, / And, Ned, a legend urge the flight- / The Typee-truants under stars / Unknown to Shakespere's _Midsummer-Night; _ / And man, if lost to Saturn's Age, / Yet feeling life no Syrian pilgrimage.
But, tell, shall he, the tourist, find / Our isles the same in violet-glow / Enamoring us what years and years- / Ah, Ned, what years and years ago!
Well, Adam advances, smart in pace, / But scarce by violets that advance you trace.
But we, in anchor-watches calm, / The Indian Psyche's languor won, / And, musing, breathed primeval balm / From Edens ere yet overrun; / Marvelling mild if mortal twice, / Here and hereafter, touch a Paradise.