Aims her light smile, and rolls her frolic eyes:

What Power inspir’d his dauntless breast to brave

The scorch’d Equator, and th’Antarctic wave?

Anna Seward

Exultation is the going

Exultation is the going

Of an inland soul to sea,

Past the houses – past the headlands –

Into deep Eternity –

Bred as we, among the mountains,

Can the sailor understand

The divine intoxication

of the first league out from land?

Emily Dickinson

from Notes on the Voyage of Owl and Girl

// The Voyage

An owl and a girl most [‘adventurous’, ‘curious’, ‘studious’] [‘set out’, ‘set sail’, ‘sailed away’] in a [‘bottle green’, ‘beetle-green’, ‘pea-green’] [‘boat’, ‘sieve’, ‘skiff’, ‘vessel’]; a [‘beautiful’, ‘shipshape’, ‘sea worthy’] [‘craft’, ‘raft’, ‘wooden shoe’], certainly, though a [‘good deal’, ‘wee bit’, ‘tad’] too [‘small’, ‘high in the stern’] to suit the two of them. They took a [‘bushel’, ‘barrel’, ‘bundle’] of [‘honey’, ‘money’] and an [‘almanac’, ‘astrolabe’, ‘barometer’, ‘chronometer’] of dubious [‘accuracy’, ‘origin’, ‘usefulness’]. The owl was [‘actually’, ‘basically’, ‘simply’, ‘slightly’] [‘home sick’, ‘sea sick’, ‘sceptical’, ‘terrible with directions’, ‘a nervous traveller’]. The girl sought to gain [‘definitive’, ‘further’, ‘first-hand’] [‘knowledge’, ‘experience’, ‘proof’] of [‘the Northwest Passage’, ‘Ultima Thule’, ‘a strange phenomena known as sea lung’].

According to my [‘calculations’, ‘library books’, ‘test results’], the girl informed the owl, it’s [‘six’, ‘seventeen’, ‘twenty-seven’] [’leagues’, ‘knots’, ‘nights’, ‘nautical miles’] [‘due north’, ‘north’, ‘northeast’] of here. Her [‘mother’, ‘great-aunt’, ‘grandmother’] had been among the most revered of [‘authors’, ‘experts’, ‘philosophers’] on this topic. But the girl had her own [‘life to live’, ‘line of inquiry’, ‘ideas’, ‘theories’].

The owl said, [‘Birds of a feather stick together’, ‘Loose lips sink

ships’, ‘Everywhere we go, there we are’].

How soon he [‘drifted’, ‘floated’, ‘sailed’, ‘veered’] off [‘topic’, ‘course’, ‘track’, ‘radar’]!

According to my [‘spyglass’, ‘sea chart’, ‘sextant’, ‘sonar’], we’re nearing the edge of [‘our story’, ‘our journey’, ‘the earth’, ‘this narrow sea’], the girl said, but still they sailed [‘for a year and a day’, ‘on through the night’, ‘on until well past bed time’], [‘despite the wet and sea fret’, ‘by the light of the silvery moon’, ‘across the North Atlantic’, ‘on a river of crystal light’, ‘into a sea of dew’].

By this time, all the owl’s [‘magazine subscriptions’, ‘snack food items’, ‘phone card credits’, ‘batteries’] had run out.

Don’t [‘fret’, ‘jinx us’, ‘obsess’, ‘second-guess’], said the girl most [‘ardently’, ‘rationally’, ‘seriously’]. The [‘diaries’, ‘letters’, ‘lists’, ‘ships’ logs’] she kept constitute the entirety of the [‘knowledge’, ‘evidence’, ‘proof’, ‘records’, ‘traces’] we have left of this, [‘impossible’, ‘implausible’, ‘improbable’] voyage toward [‘the edge of the earth’, the fountain of youth’].

J. R. Carpenter

Strange Sea

Implausible fish bloom in the depths,

mecurial flowers light up the coast;

I know red and yellow, the other colors—

But the sea, det granna granna havet, that’s most dangerous

to look at.

What name is there for the color that arouses

this thirst, which says,

the saga can happen, even to you—

Edith Södergran

Translated by Averill Curdy