ULYSSES. Ir little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, 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 9 Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades 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 · Little remains but every hour is saved To follow knowledge, like a sinking star, This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees 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 withmeThat 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 strove with Gods. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: We are not now that strength which in old days 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. LOCKSLEY HALL. COMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn. 'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall; Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts, And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts. |