The princely dome, the column and the arch, The breathing marbles and the sculptured gold, Beyond the proud possessor's nar row claim, His tuneful breast enjoys. For him the Spring Distils her dews, and from the silken gem His lucid leaves unfolds; for him the hand Of Autumn tinges every fertile branch With blooming gold, and blushes like the morn. Each passing Hour sheds tribute from her wings, And still new beauties meet his lonely walk, And loves unfelt attract him. Look, then, abroad through Nature, to the range Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres, Wheeling unshaken through the Void immense, And speak, O man! does this capacious scene With half that kindling majesty dilate Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose Refulgent from the stroke of Cæsar's fate, Amid the crowd of patriots; and his 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 were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star 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, Of bright aerial spirits live insphered In regions mild of calm and serene air, Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call Earth, and with low-thoughted care Confined and pestered in this pinfold here, Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, Unmindful of the crown that virtue gives, After this mortal change, to her true servants, Amongst the enthroned Gods on sainted seats. Yet some there be that by due steps aspire To lay their just hands on that golden key That opes the palace of eternity; To such my errand is; and, but for such, I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds With the rank vapors of this sinworn mould. But to my task. Neptune, besides the sway Of every salt flood, and each ebbing stream, Took in by lot 'twixt high and nether |