Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Harold Verschoyle Wrong (1891–1916)

The Great Adventure

THE TRAVEL birds which journey in the spring

Lust after pleasures of awakened sight;

They rout the weather in a truceless fight,

And swell their souls with joy of buffeting

And constant strife. To know the unknown thing,

To see the unseeable in God’s despite,

To try his strength against another’s might,

This set Ulysses to his wandering.

And this we still desire, we, who live

Clamped to the dulness of an ordered round;

’Tis ours to take the best the world can give,

And if the taking slay us on the way

What loss is that? We too were outward bound

Beyond the narrow shelter of the bay.