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Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vex'd 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

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For ever and for ever 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 30 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 group of stars formerly associated with wet weather.

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 40 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. 50 Death closes all; but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be