Eight Decades Old, Exhausted, Crippled-up, Cranky, Brain Fog…
And that’s just me. Good thing I’m not President of the U.S., facing off against true evil of Russian autocrats, Chinese hegemonists, and Islamist terrorists. Good thing the eight-decades-and counting Joe Biden has vast staffs of specialists to prop him up, keep him breathing, and tie his shoes.(Been a decade since I could tie my shoes. Or button my shirts.)
But Joe’s own party has turned against him this reelection cycle, to the delight of the dangerous buffoon running against him. Reminds me of years ago when my organization of the time turned on me, and drove me into clinical depression. An old friend sent me a poem, “Ulysses,” to buck me up. It helped, and I reovered and prevailed. Maybe someone should send it to Joe:
By Alfred Lord Tennyson
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…
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…
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all…
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 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…
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…
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,
‘T is 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.
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;
