It little profits that an idle king,By this still hearth, among these barren crags,Matchd with an aged wife, I mete and doleUnequal laws unto a savage race,That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel; I will drinkLife to the lees. All times I have enjoydGreatly, have sufferd greatly, both with thoseThat loved me, and alone; on shore, and whenThro scudding drifts the rainy HyadesVext the dim sea. I am become a name;For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known,cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honord 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 wherethroGleams that untravelld world whose margin fadesFor ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnishd, not to shine in use!As tho to breathe were life! Life piled on lifeWere all too little, and of one to meLittle remains; but every hour is savedFrom that eternal silence, something more,A bringer of new things; and vile it wereFor some three suns to store and hoard myself,And this gray spirit yearning in desireTo follow knowledge like a sinking star,Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho much is taken, much abides; and thoWe are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Tennyson
