Lines Composed After Having Read "Choric Song of the Lotus Eaters" For the Hundredth Time

Have had Ulysses on the brain lately. And yeah, I know I need a better title.

Now is surveyed the aggregate of all the earth,

And picked its pleasures,

Now we have tried the tune of all the sounding spheres,

And mined their measures,

Now that the grandeur of all eye-delighting sights

Has passed before us,

And to no novel spleandour from spent hopefulness

Can we restore us,

Why tread we still with withered feet our foot-tracks old,

In slowing pace,

Why with unyouthful eyes search for unvesseled sea,

Nor keep our place,

While every wave has weathered us, borne us to shores

That we have known,

To farthest latitude familiar, long familiar,

Every one?

Nought us awaits; no doubt that we had left a part

Of us with all;

And little better here to idle, earless of

The tempest's call.

Almost this doldrum goads our longing, hope in spite

Of likely end,

That further passage yielded nothing, save the sweat

And blood we spend-

But here to wait-no life in waiting, only promised

Ease from toil,

Better die for brighter guerdon, than to root

In this crude soil.

Or would it be to prove earth's spring of newness dry,

To bend the oar,

And cleave the wave, to seek a grave no worse than that

Which lies before

Us here unlabouring- Ah, but it ignoble were

To populate

This narrow isle, needless of our wisdom's gains,

To shrink from fate

Dry men and deedless, when perhaps there yet remains

Realm unespied-

Some virgin isle, untried delight of distant seas;

To more abide

Within this place, while sets horizonward the breeze-

Think on our late

Accomplished works- to grossly mar their merits bold

It were to wait.

Think you again on first the cause, what cost of pain,

What trying of fate!

How many friends much mourned have we lost, at what

Expense of tears,

Whose salt is blent amidst the sounding baths, that cured

Us of our fears,

Where piled to our mastpoints breakers dashed upon

Our groaning decks,

In strait and gulley, sinister with tearing rocks

And vessels' wrecks;

A perilled course, a path unkind, through fitful storm

'Cross faithless sea;

Yet eliminate from each, fast grew we slothful,

Listless, we,

In impious unmotion idling, by no god's

Divine decree,

Only by a lapse of will, a lazing valour

Gathering rust,

While the tide-pulse pounding beckons; let it cleanse

Our mortal dust.

-Thomas Banks-