""Nay rather yet that I could raise One hope that warm'd me in the days While still I yearn'd for human praise. "When, wide in soul, and bold of tongue, Among the tents I paused and sung, The distant battle flash'd and rung. "I sung the joyful Paean clear, And, sitting, burnish'd without fear The brand, the buckler, and the spear — "Waiting to strive a happy strife, To war with falsehood to the knife, And not to lose the good of life — "Some hidden principle to move, To put together, part and prove, And mete the bounds of hate and love —"As far as might be, to carve out Free space for every human doubt, That the whole mind might orb about — "To search thro' all I felt or saw, The springs of life, the depths of awe, And reach the law within the law: "At least, not rotting like a weed, But, having sown some generous seed, Fruitful of further thought and deed, "To pass, when Life her light withdraws, Not void of righteous self-applause, Nor in a merely selfish cause — "In some good cause, not in mine own, To perish, wept for, honour'd, known, And like a warrior overthrown..."
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Stanzas 41 - 50.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Two_Voices
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The Two Voices
The Two Voices is a poem by Alfred Tennyson written between 1833 and 1834, published in his 1842 volume of Poems. Tennyson wrote the poem, titled "Thoughts of a Suicide" in manuscript, after the death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833. Tennyson explained, "When I wrote 'The Two Voices' I was so utterly miserable, a burden to myself and to my family, that I said, 'Is life worth anything?'". In the poem, one voice urges the other to suicide; the poet's arguments against it range from vanit
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