STEVE'S CREDO:
Tennyson's poem ULYSSES


After the Trojan War and once he got home, Ulysses of Greece returned to his role as King, Father and Wiseman. But as years past, he found himself restless, and resting on his accomplishments, ruminating about his legndary travels, and waxing philosophic about his celelbrity and obsolescence (I have become a name!). 
Ulysses saw "how dull it is to rest unburnished, not to shine in use." And that "death closes all" but eanwhile old age ha both its honor and its toil.  And so it is that Ulysses in the epic poem by Sir Alferd Lord Tennyson to, he vows to hold to his purpose and is asking his Mariners (crew) "sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars...  to strive, to seek, to find, and NOT to yield."
It is profoundly amazing to grow old. Don't waste it.

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ULYSSES  

by Alfred Lord Tennyson


It little profits that an idle king, 

By this still hearth, among these barren crags, 

Match'd with an ancient wife, 

I mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race, 

That hoards, and sleeps, and feeds, and knows 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 vexxed 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 honour'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 forever and forever 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 setting star, 

Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought. 


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, 

And see the great Achilles, 

whom we loved. 



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 NEVER to yield.