Ulysses (Alfred Tennyson)
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 loved me, and alone, on shore, and
when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy
Hyades Vext 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 honour'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 forever 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 piled on life
Were
all too 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
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-loved of
me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, 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 opposed
Free hearts, free
foreheadsyou and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour 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
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.
last changes 13.12.2015, Peter Schmieder