Almost 30. As I look back nothing substantial has happened, but then again oh my oh my .. so much has happened. I have learnt to wipe my ass, ride a cycle, have sex, and lie. Those early years and the memories attached with it are pivotal to my life's journey or should I say my epic voyage or the odyssey.
A Pageant of Poems: I hope Mom hasnt thrown this X standard ICSE book away from my big black trunk of memorabilia. Little at that time did I value what the ICSE course was training me to be, teaching me through these verses. I studied the Merchant of Venice for two years. I wish I had given it a little bit more importance and felt it a layer deeper than I did. Nevertheless, there was this one poem out of the many that I distinctively remember and recollect even when I disliked poems and learnt them coz I had to. It was Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Even at that age this poem moved me and made me think. I related to this Ulysses guy. I liked how strong the story telling was and enjoyed how many scribblings I had on the white space around the two page long poem. Each word in the poem had a history, a story to tell. This was the only poem and poet that I remember to date. Its strange.
Its strange. I dont know why I think of it today. Like I had mentioned earlier life has come a full circle. There is meaning to everything, there is a purpose to all. How a book about the Indian subcontinent led to this discovery. So apt and so precise.. this poem. Its strange, but it makes sense now.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd 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: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext 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 honor'd 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 wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
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 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 gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachos,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
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 tol'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 that 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 heaven and earth; 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.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
