| |
| 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. | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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; | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| 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 | 40 |
| 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, | 45 |
| 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; | 50 |
| 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 | 55 |
| 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 | 60 |
| 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’ | 65 |
| 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. | 70 |
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