That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?

And therein lies the rub…. as Hamlet might opine…

Ulysses…handed down to those generations who will follow,

Where one side seeks to find the enobling drive within a man, a drive that makes him seek those for-off shores he has yet to lay eyes upon, to strive once more, his might and brain against the unrelenting seas… crashing their breakers upon the bulwarks of his determination, pitting his own courage against the cold remorseless hand of fate, of death, of finality, in one last surge of heroistic passion.
An attempt to try his mortality against the steel-hard sheild of death, and yet there gain the immortality of long-remembered song and respect. One last hurl of chance’s dice against the call of fate and happenstance. To drive the prow of his own vessel against God’s unrelenting seas…. and thereby win through losing….

Versus Ozymandias…

Whose admonition to those gazing upon his efforts is: Why Try? You will only meet with death, and though you try with all your might and skill, still yet the overblowing sands of time will drown your efforts and disburse your memory as a single grain of sand amongst the dunes….. Why waste your efforts? Why waste your precious time persuing that which you shall never gain?

I know that, to my mind, Ulysses’ path is always the better choice. To fight, to get beat down, to rise and fight again rather than submit. Better to glory in the chance of victory than to sleep in the certainty of death and defeat.

Generations sing the songs of Ulysses, and remember him and his men for the heroes they were. Ozymandias is remembered only by those who fear to challenge death, who caution the bold because they themselves dare not venture their own lives upon some distant and implausible reward.

As was said by a better writer than I will ever be: “The coward dies a thousand deaths, but the valiant never tastes of death but once…”

Respects,

AW1 Tim

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

–No Second Troy, W.B. Yeats