Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson

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.
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 Thro' scudding drifts
the rainy Ilyades Vexed the dim sea:
I am become a name
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known:
cities of men
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 reach the Happy isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
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
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delights 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'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
For ever and for ever when I move.
To rust unburnished not to shine In use
As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, an 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
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus.
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulful
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
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 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:
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil:
Death closes all: but somewhere ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done.