This labour, by slow prudence to make mild 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 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 honour 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,[5] 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. [1] Virgil, _Æn_., i., 748, and iii., 516. [2] _Odyssey_, i., 1-4. [3] _Cf_. Shakespeare, _Troilus and Cressida_:— Perseverance, dear, my lord, Keeps honour bright: To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail In monumental mockery. [4] How admirably has Tennyson touched off the character of the Telemachus of the _Odyssey_. [5] The Happy Isles, the _Fortunatæ Insulæ_ of the Romans and the αἱ τῶν Μακάρων νῆσοι of the Greeks, have been identified by geographers as those islands in the Atlantic off the west coast of Africa; some take them to mean the Canary Islands, the Madeira group and the Azores, while they may have included the Cape de Verde Islands as well. What seems certain is that these places with their soft delicious climate and lovely scenery gave the poets an idea of a happy abode for departed spirits, and so the conception of the _Elysian Fields_. The _loci classici_ on these abodes are Homer, Odyssey, iv., 563 _seqq._:— ᾁλλά σ’ ες Ἠλύσιον πεδίον καὶ πέιρατα γαιής ἀθάνατοι πέμψουσιν, ὅθι ξανθὸς Ῥαδάμανθυς τῇ περ ῥηίστη βιοτὴ πέλει ἀνθρώποισιν, οὐ νιφετὸς, οὔτ’ ἄρ χειμὼν πολὺς, οὔτε ποτ’ ὄμβρος ἀλλ’ άιεὶ Ζεφύροιο λιγὺ πνέιοντας ἀήτας ὠκεανὸς ἀνιήσιν ἀναψύχειν ἀνθρώπους.