"Ulysses" - Excerpt Part I

Listen to:

Ulysses (excerpt - Part I) (1:32)

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

    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

    Vexed 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 honoured 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

    For ever and for ever 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 were

    For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

    And this grey spirit yearning in desire

    To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

    Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.