When I was just a boy
daydreaming at school,
I thought, ‘Suppose an owl
were frightened of the dark.’
I laughed behind my book.
Many and many a day
the teacher had me out.
‘And there’s a fish,’ I thought,
‘somewhere, that hates the sea.’
As the taws cracked, I grinned;
those two thoughts gripped my mind.
I gazed across a gulf
dividing those who dare
from those who fear to be.
Too many souls are still
like that fish, or that owl:
with their true life to make
in the depths of the dark,
if they could but endure;
who flee from their dark star,
each from his own true self;
perish in this world’s air.