IT little profits that an idle king, | |
By this still hearth, among these barren crags, | |
Match’d 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 enjoy’d | |
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those | |
That lov’d me, and alone; on shore, and when | |
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades | |
Vex’d the dim sea. I am become a name; | |
For always roaming with a hungry heart | |
Much have I seen and known: cities of men | |
And manners, climates, councils, governments, | |
Myself not least, but honor’d 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 wherethro’ | |
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades | |
For ever and for ever when I move. | |
How dull it is to pause, to make an end, | |
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use! | |
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life pil’d on life | |
Were all too little, and of one to me | |
Little remains: but every hour is sav’d | |
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 gray 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 sceptre and the isle— | |
Well-lov’d of me, discerning to fulfil | |
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild | |
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees | |
Subdue them to the useful and the good. | |
Most blameless is he, centred 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 toil’d, and wrought, and thought
with me— | |
That ever with a frolic welcome took | |
The thunder and the sunshine, and oppos’d | |
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 with many voices. Come, my friends, | |
’T is 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. | |
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ | |
We are not now that strength which in old days | |
Mov’d 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. | |
|
