Chapter 1
“SOME WORK OF NOBLE NOTE”
It is appropriate to start this book of inspirational readings with a poem that sets the stage for the chapters that follow. It is from Alfred Lord Tennyson's story of the legendary Ulysses.
Ulysses was the Roman name for Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s ODYSSEY. As the story goes, Odysseus, an ancient Greek warrior-king, led the Greeks in the conquest of Troy; then sought adventure with his ship and crew for many years throughout the area of the now Mediterranean. When he returned to his home, he lost interest in life, administering his kingdom with patient routine, and missed the excitement of battle and the bold exploration of new territory. Tennyson describes this frustration and his urge to seek newer worlds in his poem “Ulysses.”
“It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren
crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and
dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know
not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: . . . .
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, . . . .
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."
He sees life winding down, yet he does not want to quit without a final challenge:
"Some work of noble note, may yet be
done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with
gods.”
Then he rallies his men to the new life ahead:
". . . . 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 paths
Of all the western stars, until I die.”
He goes on, talking about the risks and the adventures that lie ahead, and poses the challenge:
“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.”
A great inspiration for one who needs a renewal of horizons. Worth re-reading from time to time.