We have forgotten much, but not the weather

 In the end we all leave in the routine

process of passage from one state to next,

it’s equally for all, do not be vexed 

no one’s yet found out how to make it mean

anything that we can comprehend.

There’s nothing more we’ll ever need to do 

but wait our solemn turn and pas on through 

the tunnel of unknowable dark end.

When we begin, we know not what we are 

except we see, and hear, and understand,

some of what the world seems to demand,

and know how to keep close and wander far

until we reach the furthest we can go,

uncertainty and fear our only guides,

yet we still found our voices and our sides,

leaving us little more to seek or know.

We aren’t the titans that we yearned to be 

at the first moment when we learnt ride

the winds of fortune, and to take the tide

at highest point and enter the huge sea

on which we sail, but never in straight line,

for currents move us that we can’t deny,

while the far shore lies far beyond our eye,

and we keep moving in both foul and fine 

to the deep point, and there we wait our turn 

while greater vessels pass out of our view.

When we move on we shall find something new,

regret our missteps, then trim sails and yearn 

to join a fleet, or simply to advance 

and learn as much as we may safely know.

There’s nothing much we learn that is quite so

alarming as the purest, clearest chance

to set the course and then let wind and tide

deliver us to our most wanted port.

It isn’t that our journey has been fraught

with endless perils of the long, hard, ride

across the waters to this newer main.

For a long moment we desire to stay,

but we keep constant to our given way,

not needing either ease of task, or strain

to overcome our worry, fear, and thought.

Backed by swift breeze, and following our star

we journey onward, and no storm can mar

our purity of purpose. There is naught 

beyond our voyage, and our urgent need

to reach our goal, and take the gangway down

to the safe harbor, and the happy town 

where we can at last rest from the hard deed

we have accomplished. After weary trip

we praise ourselves for having passed a test 

of all our powers, and now may pause to rest,

and see it all as one more simple sip

from life’s bright chalice. All that task is done,

we shift our cargo from dark hold to bright dock,

and that is all, there is no more to clock,

we get a moment to rest in the sun.

We have learnt how to answer each great call,

there’s nothing now can make us sigh or fall.