The Boyhood of Raleigh by Sir John Everett Millais
That painting: the brothers spell-bound,
stock-still, as the barefoot sailor points
to the horizon. A toy ship
beached on pebbles
piled like doubloons.
It’s doubtless the story
of setting out, long years ago,
with some bold captain, to explore
the unmapped world, the impossibly –
enticingly – remote
countries which in memory
have changed their meaning and become
his childhood when, like them, he heard
the truth in an old seadog’s lies.
Tom Vaughan
