The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art (2nd ed.) (1911): Based Originally on Bulfinch's "Age of Fable" (1855)Bulfinch, Thomas
Philosophy
The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art (2nd ed.) (1911): Based Originally on Bulfinch's "Age of Fable" (1855)
Bulfinch, Thomas
English poetry; Mythology, Classical; Mythology, Norse
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 has 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,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
FOOTNOTES:
[330] Sonnet by Andrew Lang.
[331] For the authorship of the Odyssey, see § 298 (3); and for
translations, see corresponding section of the Commentary.
[332] Odyssey, 9.
[333] § 141.
[334] Odyssey, 10.
[335] From Austin Dobson's Prayer of the Swine to Circe.
[336] Odyssey, 10; adapted from Butcher and Lang's translation. So the
following from Odyssey, 11.
[337] Odyssey, 12.
[338] _Incidit in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim._
[339] Odyssey, 1, 10.
[340] Odyssey, 5, 64 (Cowper's translation).
[341] Odyssey, 6.
[342] Odyssey, 7.
[343] Andrew Lang, A Song of Phæacia.
[344] Odyssey, 8.
[345] Odyssey, 13.
[346] Stephen Phillips, Ulysses.
[347] Odyssey, 14.
[348] Odyssey, 15.
[349] Odyssey 16, 212 (Cowper's translation).
[350] Odyssey, 17, 290 (Cowper's translation).
[351] Odyssey, 19.
[352] Odyssey, 21.
[353] Odyssey, 22.
CHAPTER XXV
ADVENTURES OF ÆNEAS
Roman Virgil, thou that singest
Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,
Ilion falling, Rome arising,
wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre;
Landscape lover, lord of language
more than he that sang the Works and Days,
All the chosen coin of fancy
flashing out from many a golden phrase;...
Light among the vanish'd ages;
star that gildest yet this phantom shore;
Golden branch amid the shadows,
kings and realms that pass to rise no more;...
Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd,
and the Rome of freemen holds her place,
I, from out the Northern Island
sunder'd once from all the human race,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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