8.

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak :

The Lotos blows by every winding creek :

All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone:

Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone

Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.

We have had enough of action, and of motion we,

Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard when the surge was seething free,

Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the

sea.

Let us swear an oath and keep it with an equal mind

In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined

On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind.

For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd

Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world: Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,

Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deep and fiery sands,

Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.

But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine, and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer some, 'tis whisper'd, down
in hell

Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.

Surely, surely slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore

Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; O rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

ULYSSES.

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 enjoyed

Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' 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 honor'd 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 thro'

Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use !

As tho' 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,
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 fulfil
This labor, 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 honor and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note may yet be done,
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 touch 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.

Students are referred to "The Adventures of Ulysses," by Charles Lamb, told in inimitable prose; to "The Story of Ulysses," by Alfred J. Church; and to a humorous poem called "Polyphemus and Ulysses," by John G. Saxe.