| IT little profits that an idle king, |
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| By this still hearth, among these barren crags, |
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| Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole |
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| Unequal laws unto a savage race, |
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| That hoard and sleep, and feed, and know not me. |
5 |
| I cannot rest from travel: I will drink |
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| Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d |
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| Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those |
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| That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when |
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| Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades |
10 |
| Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; |
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| For always roaming with a hungry heart |
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| Much have I seen and known; cities of men |
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| And manners, climates, councils, governments, |
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| Myself not least, but honour’d of them all; |
15 |
| And drunk delight of battle with my peers, |
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| Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. |
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| I am a part of all that I have met; |
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| Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ |
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| Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades |
20 |
| For ever and for ever when I move. |
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| How dull it is to pause, to make an end, |
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| To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use! |
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| As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life |
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| Were all too little, and of one to me |
25 |
| Little remains: but every hour is saved |
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| From that eternal silence, something more, |
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| A bringer of new things; and vile it were |
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| For some three suns to store and hoard myself, |
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| And this gray spirit yearning in desire |
30 |
| To follow knowledge, like a sinking star, |
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| Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. |
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| This is my son, mine own Telemachus, |
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| To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle— |
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| Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil |
35 |
| This labour, by slow prudence to make mild |
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| A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees |
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| Subdue them to the useful and the good. |
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| Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere |
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| Of common duties, decent not to fail |
40 |
| In offices of tenderness, and pay |
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| Meet adoration to my household gods, |
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| When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. |
|
| There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail: |
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| There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, |
45 |
| Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me— |
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| 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; |
50 |
| Death closes all: but something ere the end, |
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| Some work of noble note, may yet be done, |
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| Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. |
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| The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: |
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| The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep |
55 |
| Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, |
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| ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world. |
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| Push off, and sitting well in order smite |
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| The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds |
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| To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths |
60 |
| Of all the western stars until I die. |
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| It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: |
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| It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, |
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| And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. |
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| Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ |
65 |
| We are not now that strength which in old days |
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| Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; |
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| One equal temper of heroic hearts, |
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| Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will |
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| To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. |
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