“The Atlantic is a stormy moat, and the Mediterranean,The blue pool in the old garden,More than five thousand years has drunk sacrificeOf ships and blood and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific:The ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant.Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfsNor any future world-quarrel of westeringAnd eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed of power, battle-falcons,Are a mote of dust in the great scale-pan.Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland plunging like dolphins through the grey sea-smokeInto pale sea, look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet: this dome, this half-globe, this bulgingEyeball of water, arched over to Asia,Australia and white Antarctica: those are the eyelids that never close; this is the staring unsleepingEye of the earth, and what it watches is not our wars.”

“To the sea, to the sea! The white gulls are crying,The wind is blowing, and the white foam is flying.West, west away, the round sun is falling, Grey ship, grey ship, do you hear them calling, The voices of my people that have gone before me? I will leave, I will leave the woods that bore me;For our days are ending and our years failing.I will pass the wide waters lonely sailing.Long are the waves on the Last Shore falling,Sweet are the voices in the Lost Isle calling,In Eressea, in Elvenhome that no man can discover,Where the leaves fall not: land of my people forever!”

“The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from all four corners of heaven.”

“Earth, Ashes to ashes and dust to dust in mother earth we place our trust and as we cycle through our years we water it with blood and tears...”

“And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

“Beyond the East the sunrise, beyond the West the sea,And East and West the wanderlust that will not let me be;It works in me like madness, dear, to bid me say good-by!For the seas call and the stars call, and oh, the call of the sky!I know not where the white road runs, nor what the blue hills are,But man can have the sun for friend, and for his guide a star;And there's no end of voyaging when once the voice is heard,For the river calls and the road calls, and oh, the call of a bird!Yonder the long horizon lies, and there by night and dayThe old ships draw to home again, the young ships sail away;And come I may, but go I must, and if men ask you why,You may put the blame on the stars and the sun and the white road and the sky!”