Here, If Anywhere, Surely

Take the Adventure, heed the call,
now ere the irrevocable moment passes!
‘Tis but a banging of the door behind you,
a blithesome step forward,
and you are out of the old life and into the new!
Then some day, some day long hence,
jog home here if you will,
when the cup has been drained
and the play has been played,
and sit down by your quiet river
with a store of goodly memories for company. *

Hampton Hawes: Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams

This is the place of my song-dream,
the place the music played to me,
whispered the Rat, as if in a trance.
Here, in this holy place,
here, if anywhere, surely. *

Grant Green: My Favorite Things

And beyond the Wild Wood again? he asked.
Where it's all blue and dim and one sees
what may be hills or perhaps they mayn't
and something like the smoke of towns
or is it only cloud drift.
Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wild World,
said the Rat. And that's something
that doesn't matter either to you or me.
I've never been there, and I'm never going
nor you either, if you've got any sense at all. *

The river still chattered on to him,
a babbling procession of the best stories in the world,
sent from the heart of the earth
to be told at last to the insatiable sea. *

--Kenneth Grahame
The Wind in the Willows *