|
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, |
| 5 |
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 |
| 10 |
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, |
| 15 |
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' |
| 20 |
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 |
| 25 |
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, |
| 30 |
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, |
| 35 |
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 |
| 40 |
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: |
| 45 |
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 foreheads?you and I are old; |
| 50 |
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: |
| 55 |
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 |
| 60 |
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. |
| 65 |
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 |
| 70 |
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. |