It little profits that an idle king by this still hearth,
Among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife,
I meet 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 leaves.
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 high days vexed the gypsy,
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,
Where through 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,
Or 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 sons to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning and 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 scepter 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 posed free hearts,
Free foreheads.
You and I are old,
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil,
Death closes all,
But something e'er the end,
Some work of noble note may yet be done.
Not unbecoming men that drove 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,
Yet 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.
