noon
Farewell to desolate towns -- to fields with their savage intermixture of corn and weeds -- to ever multiplying relics of our lost species . Ocean , we commit ourselves to thee -- even as the patriarch of old floated above the drowned world , let us be saved , as thus we betake ourselves to thy perennial flood . Adrian sat at the helm ; I attended to the rigging , the breeze right aft filled our swelling canvas , and we ran before it over the untroubled deep . The wind died away at noon ; its idle breath just permitted us to hold our course . As lazy , fair-weather sailors , careless of the coming hour , we talked gaily of our coasting voyage , of our arrival at Athens . We would make our home of one of the Cyclades , and there in myrtle-groves , amidst perpetual spring , fanned by the wholesome sea-breezes -- we would live long years in beatific union -- Was there such a thing as death in the world ? -- The sun passed its zenith , and lingered down the stainless floor of heaven .