ULYSSES. Ir little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those And drunk delight of battle with my peers, 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 Little remains: but every hour is saved A bringer of new things; and vile it were In offices of tenderness, and pay When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. 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, The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Push off, and sitting well in order smite 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. LOCKSLEY HALL. COMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn. 'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall; Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts, And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts. Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West. |