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    Ulysses <br />
    Alfred Lord Tennyson<br />
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    It little profits that an idle king,<br />
    By this still hearth, among these barren crags,<br />
    Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole<br />
    Unequal laws unto a savage race,<br />
    That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.<br />
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    I cannot rest from travel: I will drink<br />
    Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed<br />
    Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those<br />
    That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when<br />
    Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades<br />
    Vest the dim sea: I am become a name;<br />
    For always roaming with a hungry heart<br />
    Much have I seen and known; cities of men<br />
    And manners, climates, councils, governments,<br />
    Myself not least, but honoured of them all;<br />
    And drunk delight of battle with my peers;<br />
    Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.<br />
    I am part of all that I have met;<br />
    Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough<br />
    Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades<br />
    For ever and for ever when I move.<br />
    How dull it is to pause, to make an end,<br />
    To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!<br />
    As though to breath were life. Life piled on life<br />
    Were all to little, and of one to me<br />
    Little remains: but every hour is saved<br />
    From that eternal silence, something more,<br />
    A bringer of new things; and vile it were<br />
    For some three suns to store and hoard myself,<br />
    And this gray spirit yearning in desire<br />
    To follow knowledge like a sinking star,<br />
    Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.<br />
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    This is my son, mine own Telemachus,<br />
    To whom I leave the scepter and the isle<br />
    Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill<br />
    This labour, by slow prudence to make mild<br />
    A rugged people, and through soft degrees<br />
    Subdue them to the useful and the good.<br />
    Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere<br />
    Of common duties, decent not to fail<br />
    In offices of tenderness, and pay<br />
    Meet adoration to my household gods,<br />
    When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.<br />
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    There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:<br />
    There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,<br />
    Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me<br />
    That ever with a frolic welcome took<br />
    The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed<br />
    Free hearts, free foreheads you and I are old;<br />
    Old age had yet his honour and his toil;<br />
    Death closes all: but something ere the end,<br />
    Some work of noble note, may yet be done,<br />
    Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.<br />
    The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:<br />
    The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep<br />
    Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,<br />
    'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.<br />
    Push off, and sitting well in order smite<br />
    The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds<br />
    To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths<br />
    Of all the western stars, until I die.<br />
    It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:<br />
    It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,<br />
    And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.<br />
    Though much is taken, much abides; and though<br />
    We are not now that strength which in the old days<br />
    Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,<br />
    One equal-temper of heroic hearts,<br />
    Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will<br />
    To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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