Life Explained, Part Twenty-Nine: "Where Lies The Land To Which The Ship Would Go?"

The image of life as a sea voyage -- pleasurable or painful, paradisal or hellish, aimless or purposeful -- has its origins in antiquity.  As one might expect, Explanations of Life abound.

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861) was a friend of Matthew Arnold's. Hence, he would have been familiar with the somewhat bleak sea-vision presented by Arnold in "To Marguerite -- Continued":  "Yes! in the sea of life enisled . . . We mortal millions live alone."  In the following untitled poem, Clough offers a sea-vision that may not be as bleak as Arnold's -- at least, for example, there is a prospect of companionship.  The only catch is that the voyage appears to lack a destination (or a port of embarkation, for that matter).

                                         Emily Carr, "Seascape" (c. 1935)

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.

On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face,
Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace!
Or, o'er the stern reclining, watch below
The foaming wake far widening as we go.

On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave,
How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!
The dripping sailor on the reeling mast
Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.

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.

Arthur Hugh Clough, Poems (1879).

Of course, some would say that a destination is beside the point.  For instance, C. P. Cavafy in "Ithaka":

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery. . . .

C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems: Revised Edition (translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard) (Princeton University Press 1992).

                                          Emily Carr, "Sky" (1935-1936)