Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson

              It little profits that an idle king,
              By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
              Matched 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
              Through 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 honored 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 wherethrough
              Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
              For ever and for ever 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
              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 scepter and the isle --
              Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
              This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
              A rugged people, and through soft degrees
              Subdue them to the useful and the good.
              Most blameless is he, centered 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 toiled, 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.
              Though much is taken, much abides; and though
              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.