Myself not least, but honored of them

all;

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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

20

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 25 Little remains. But every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something

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 35 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 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,

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Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and

thought with me

That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and op

posed

As through the land at eve we went,
We fell out, my wife and I,
And plucked the ripened ears,
Oh, we fell out, I know not why,
And kissed again with tears.
And blessings on the falling out
That all the more endears,
When we fall out with those we love
And kiss again with tears!

For when we came where lies the child
We lost in other years,
There above the little grave,
Oh, there above the little grave,
We kissed again with tears.

THE SPLENDOR FALLS ON CASTLE WALLS

The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,

5

11

And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

5

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

Oh, hark, oh, hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! Oh, sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

1

like a ghost,

5

And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill

Their thousands wreaths of dangling water-smoke,

That like a broken purpose waste in air. So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales

Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth 25 Arise to thee; the children call, and I Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,

Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;

Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn,

The moan of doves in immemorial elms,

And murmuring of innumerable bees.

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We have but faith; we cannot know, For knowledge is of things we see; And yet we trust it comes from thee, A beam in darkness; let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; 26 That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before,

But vaster. We are fools and slight; We mock thee when we do not fear. 30 But help thy foolish ones to bear; Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seemed my sin in me, What seemed my worth since I began; For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

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