Ulysses
by Alfred, Lord
Tennyson
|
It little profits that an idle king, |
By this still hearth, among these barren
crags, |
Matched with an agèd 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 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 honoured 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 untravelled 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 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 through 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 toiled, and wrought, and
thought with me— |
That ever with 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 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 stove 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, |
’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 | Classic
Poems |
|
[ The Brook ] [ Blow, Bugle, Blow ] [ Come into the garden Maud ] [ Tithonus ] [ Ulysses ] [ Tears, Idle Tears ] [ The Lady of Shalott ] [ Song of the Lotus-Eaters ] [ The Charge of the Light Brigade ] [ In the Valley of Cauteretz ] [ In Memoriam ] [ The Eagle ] |