at the beginning of the sixth stanza?  Here he wonders whether there is really any plan in the universe, or whether things all go by chance.  Who are the captains of whom he speaks?  What different types of people are represented in the last two lines of stanza six?  What is the “noisome hold” of the Earth ship?  Who are those cursing and sighing?  Who are they in the line, “But they said, ‘Thou art not of us!’”?  Who are they in the next line but one?  Why does the author turn back to the flowers in the next few lines?  What is omitted from the line beginning “To be out”?  Explain the last three lines of stanza eight.  How do the ships of Gloucester differ from the ship Earth?  What is the “arriving” spoken of in the last stanza?  What two possibilities does the author suggest as to the fate of the ship?  Why does he end his poem with a question?  What is the purpose of the poem?  Why is it considered good?  What do you think was the author’s feeling about the way the poor and helpless are treated?  Read the poem through aloud, thinking what each line means.

ROAD-HYMN FOR THE START

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY

      Leave the early bells at chime,
      Leave the kindled hearth to blaze,
    Leave the trellised panes where children linger out the waking-time,
    Leave the forms of sons and fathers trudging through the misty ways,
    Leave the sounds of mothers taking up their sweet laborious days.

      Pass them by! even while our soul
      Yearns to them with keen distress. 
    Unto them a part is given; we will strive to see the whole. 
    Dear shall be the banquet table where their singing spirits press;
    Dearer be our sacred hunger, and our pilgrim loneliness.

      We have felt the ancient swaying
      Of the earth before the sun,
    On the darkened marge of midnight heard sidereal rivers playing;
    Rash it was to bathe our souls there, but we plunged and all was done. 
    That is lives and lives behind us—­lo, our journey is begun!

    Careless where our face is set,
      Let us take the open way. 
    What we are no tongue has told us:  Errand-goers who forget? 
    Soldiers heedless of their harry?  Pilgrim people gone astray? 
    We have heard a voice cry “Wander!” That was all we heard it say.

      Ask no more:  ’tis much, ’tis much! 
      Down the road the day-star calls;
    Touched with change in the wide heavens, like a leaf the
      frost winds touch,
    Flames the failing moon a moment, ere it shrivels white and falls;
    Hid aloft, a wild throat holdeth sweet and sweeter intervals.

      Leave him still to ease in song
      Half his little heart’s unrest: 
    Speech is his, but we may journey toward the life for which we long. 
    God, who gives the bird its anguish, maketh nothing manifest,
    But upon our lifted foreheads pours the boon of endless quest.