Let me begin this blog with a poem that has inspired me over the years...has been so instrumental to my mission and vision of life. I love this poem very much. Hope this will inspire you too.
Ulysses
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 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 honour'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 wherethro'
Gleams
that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For
ever 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 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 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,
'T
is 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.
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