ULYSSES

   ULYSSES

     It little profits that an idle king,
     By this hearth, among these barren crags,
     Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
     Unequal laws unto a savage race,
     That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
     I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
     Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
     Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
     That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
     Through the scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
     Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
     For always roaming with a hungry heart
     Much I have seen and known,- cities of men
     And manners, climates, councils, governments,
     Myself not least, but honored of them all;
     and drunk delight of battle with my peers,
     Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
     I am a part of all that I have met;
     Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
     Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
     For ever and for ever when I move.
     How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
     To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
     As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
     Were all to little, and of one to me
     Little remains; but every hour is saved
     From that eternal silence, something more,
     A bringer of new things, and vile it were
     For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
     And this grey spirit yearning in desire
     To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
     Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
     
     This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
     To whom I leave the scepter and the isle - 
     Well loved of me, discerning to fulfill
     This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
     A rugged people, and through soft degrees
     Subdue them to the useful and the good.
     Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
     Of common duties, decent not to fail
     In offices of tenderness, and pay
     Meet adoration to my household gods,
     When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

     There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
     There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
     Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me - 
     That ever a frolic welcome took 
     The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
     Free hearts, free foreheads - you and I are old;
     Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
     Death closes all; but something ere the end,
     Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
     Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
     The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
     The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs, the deep
     Moans round round with many voices. Come my friends,
     'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
     Push off, and sitting well in order smite
     the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
     To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
     Of all the western stars, until I die.
     It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
     It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
     And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
     Though much is taken, much abides; and though
     We are not now that strength which in old days
     Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
     One equal temper of heroic hearts,
     Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
     To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.


                               -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson