Where’er thou sail’st who sailed with me,

Though now thou climbest loftier mounts,

And fairer rivers dost ascend,

Be thou my Muse, my Brother —.

 

I am bound, I am bound, for a distant shore,

By a lonely isle, by a far Azore,

There it is, there it is, the treasure I seek,

On the barren sands of a desolate creek.

 

I sailed up a river with a pleasant wind,

New lands, new people, and new thoughts to find;

Many fair reaches and headlands appeared,

And many dangers were there to be feared;

But when I remember where I have been,

And the fair landscapes that I have seen,

Thou seemest the only permanent shore,

The cape never rounded, nor wandered o’er.

 

Fluminaque obliquis cinxit declivia ripis;

Quæ, diversa locis, partim sorbentur ab ipsa;

In mare perveniunt partim, campoque recepta

Liberioris aquæ, pro ripis litora pulsant.

Ovid, Met. I. 39

He confined the rivers within their sloping banks,

Which in different places are part absorbed by the earth,

Part reach the sea, and being received within the plain

Of its freer waters, beat the shore for banks.