Part Of An Eternal Dialogue

Youth:
What do I hear on my window rapping
Cutting my rest like an edge of pain?

Age:
Only the ghost of a dead bough tapping
or the icy knuckles of long cold rain.

Youth:
Nay, it is something that urges me forward,
a surging that throbs through my veins like fire.

Age:
It is only a lone wave rolling shoreward
Spread on the sand in its last desire.

Youth:
I must be off for the sea and the mountain
are deep and high and life is short.

Age:
Life will leave you an empty fountain
Or a battered ship that never made port.

Youth:
Yet I will go though it lift me or break me,
A journeyman takes what the journey will bring.
Too soon must I sit by the fireside to slake me
A thirst not appeased by remembering.