ULYSSES. IT little profits that an idle king By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched 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 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 honored 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 Forever and forever 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 Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telema chus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle Well loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labor, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and through soft de grees 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 honor 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, '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, RUMBLE thy belly-full! Spit, fire! spout, rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters : I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness, I never gave you kingdom, called you children; You owe me no subscription; why then, let fall Your horrible pleasure; here I stand your slave, A poor infirm, weak, and despised old man; But yet I call you servile ministers, That have with two pernicious daughters joined Your high-engendered battles 'gainst a head So old and white as this. O! O!'tis foul! SHAKSPEARE. OUTLINE. OF Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, Love, and Hope, And melancholy Fear subdued by Faith; Of blessed consolations in distress; Of moral strength, and intellectual power; Jehovah, with his thunder, and the choir Of shouting Angels, and the empyreal thrones, I pass them unalarmed. Not Chaos, not The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out By help of dreams, can breed such fear and awe As fall upon us often when we look Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man, My haunt, and the main region of my song. Beautya living Presence of the earth, Surpassing the most fair ideal Forms Which craft of delicate Spirits doth Or a mere fiction of what never was? For the discerning intellect of Man, When wedded to this goodly uni verse In love and holy passion, shall find these A simple produce of the common day. I, long before the blissful hour arrives, Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse Of this great consummation: -- and, by words Which speak of nothing more than what we are, Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep Of Death, and win the vacant and the vain To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims How exquisitely the individual Mind (And the progressive powers, perhaps no less, Of the whole species) to the external World Is fitted: and how exquisitely, too (Theme this but little heard of among men — ) The external World is fitted to the And the creation (by no lower name ment. Such grateful haunts foregoing, if I oft Must turn elsewhere, to travel near the tribes And fellowships of men, and see ill sights Of madding passions mutually inflamed; Must hear Humanity in fields and groves Pipe solitary anguish; or must hang Brooding above the fierce confede rate storm Of sorrow, barricaded evermore Within the walls of cities, - may these sounds Have their authentic comment; that even these Hearing, I be not downcast or for lorn! Where his fair offspring, nursed in princely lore, Are coming to attend their father's state, And new-intrusted sceptre; but their way Lies through the perplexed paths of this drear wood, The nodding horror of whose shady brows Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger; And here their tender age might suffer peril, But that by quick command from Sovereign Jove I was despatched for their defence and guard; And listen why, for I will tell you now What never yet was heard in tale or song, From old or modern bard, in hall or bower. Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape Crushed the sweet poison of misusèd wine, After the Tuscan mariners transformed, Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed, On Circé's island fell: who knows not Circé, The daughter of the sun, whose charmed cup Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape, And downward fell into a grovelling swine? This Nymph that gazed upon his clustering locks |