ULYSSES.

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 untravelled world, whose margin fades

Forever and forever 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

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telema

chus,

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 rugged people, and through soft de

grees

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 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,

RUMBLE thy belly-full! Spit, fire! spout, rain!

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters :

I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness,

I never gave you kingdom, called you children;

You owe me no subscription; why then, let fall

Your horrible pleasure; here I stand your slave,

A poor infirm, weak, and despised old man;

But yet I call you servile ministers, That have with two pernicious daughters joined

Your high-engendered battles 'gainst a head

So old and white as this. O! O!'tis foul!

SHAKSPEARE.

OUTLINE.

OF Truth, of Grandeur, Beauty, Love, and Hope,

And melancholy Fear subdued by Faith;

Of blessed consolations in distress; Of moral strength, and intellectual

power;

Jehovah, with his thunder, and the choir

Of shouting Angels, and the empyreal thrones,

I pass them unalarmed. Not Chaos, not

The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out

By help of dreams, can breed such fear and awe

As fall upon us often when we look Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man,

My haunt, and the main region of my song.

Beautya living Presence of the earth,

Surpassing the most fair ideal Forms Which craft of delicate Spirits doth

Or a mere fiction of what never was? For the discerning intellect of Man, When wedded to this goodly uni

verse

In love and holy passion, shall find these

A simple produce of the common day.

I, long before the blissful hour arrives,

Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse

Of this great consummation: -- and, by words

Which speak of nothing more than what we are,

Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep

Of Death, and win the vacant and the vain

To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims

How exquisitely the individual Mind (And the progressive powers, perhaps no less,

Of the whole species) to the external World

Is fitted: and how exquisitely,

too

(Theme this but little heard of among men — )

The external World is fitted to the
Mind;

And the creation (by no lower name
Can it be called) which they with
blended might
Accomplish:- this is our high argu-

ment.

Such grateful haunts foregoing, if I oft

Must turn elsewhere, to travel near the tribes

And fellowships of men, and see ill sights

Of madding passions mutually inflamed;

Must hear Humanity in fields and groves

Pipe solitary anguish; or must hang Brooding above the fierce confede

rate storm

Of sorrow, barricaded evermore Within the walls of cities, - may

these sounds

Have their authentic comment; that

even these

Hearing, I be not downcast or for

lorn!

Where his fair offspring, nursed in princely lore,

Are coming to attend their father's state,

And new-intrusted sceptre; but their way

Lies through the perplexed paths of this drear wood,

The nodding horror of whose shady brows

Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger;

And here their tender age might suffer peril,

But that by quick command from Sovereign Jove

I was despatched for their defence and guard;

And listen why, for I will tell you

now

What never yet was heard in tale or song,

From old or modern bard, in hall or bower.

Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape

Crushed the sweet poison of misusèd wine,

After the Tuscan mariners transformed,

Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,

On Circé's island fell: who knows not Circé,

The daughter of the sun, whose charmed cup

Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape,

And downward fell into a grovelling swine?

This Nymph that gazed upon his

clustering locks