Explore "To N. V. De G. S" by Robert Louis Stevenson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THE unfathomable sea, and time, and tears, / The deeds of heroes and the crimes of kings / Dispart us; and the river of events / Has, for an age of years, to east and west / More widely borne our cradles. Thou to me / Art foreign, as when seamen at the dawn / Descry a land far off and know not which.
So I approach uncertain; so I cruise / Round thy mysterious islet, and behold / Surf and great mountains and loud river-bars, / And from the shore hear inland voices call.
Strange is the seaman's heart; he hopes, he fears; / Draws closer and sweeps wider from that coast; / Last, his rent sail refits, and to the deep / His shattered prow uncomforted puts back.
Yet as he goes he ponders at the helm / Of that bright island; where he feared to touch, / His spirit readventures; and for years, / Where by his wife he slumbers safe at home, / Thoughts of that land revisit him; he sees / The eternal mountains beckon, and awakes / Yearning for that far home that might have been.