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Call'd us to pet thee or to praise,
Dear little friend! at every turn?

That loving heart, that patient soul,
Had they indeed no longer span,

To run their course, and reach their goal,
And read their homily to man?

That liquid, melancholy eye,

From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs

Seem'd surging the Virgilian cry,

The sense of tears in mortal things

That steadfast, mournful strain, consoled
By spirits gloriously gay,

And temper of heroic mould

What, was four years their whole short day?

Yes, only four! - and not the course

Of all the centuries yet to come,

And not the infinite resource

Of nature, with her countless sum

Of figures, with her fulness vast
Of new creation evermore,
Can ever quite repeat the past,
Or just thy little self restore.

Stern law of every mortal lot!

Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear,

And builds himself I know not what

Of second life I know not where.

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We lay thee, close within our reach,
Here, where the grass is smooth and warm,
Between the holly and the beech,

Where oft we watch'd thy couchant form,

Asleep, yet lending half an ear

To travellers on the Portsmouth road; ·
There choose we thee, O guardian dear,
Mark'd with a stone, thy last abode!

Then some, who through this garden pass,
When we too, like thy self, are clay,
Shall see thy grave upon the grass,
And stop before the stone, and say :

People who lived here long ago
Did by this stone, it seems, intend
To name for future times to know

The dachs-hound, Geist, their little friend.

10

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Ulysses on Old Age

(From Ulysses)

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,

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- 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,

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"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.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
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.

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