A bit of poetry that I attempted to quote yesterday at work, but less than successfully, i.e., I remembered the second and fourth lines and substituted "something something something" for the first and third:

"Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things."

The back half of the same stanza is among the greatest statements ever made about the spirit of adventure and Man's need to challenge the unknown, bugger the cost:

"The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead."

All of this is of course from Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden."

Hey, that could make a pretty good science fiction novel about colonizing an alien world...

Part I: The Ports Ye Shall Not Enter
Part II: The Roads Ye Shall Not Tread
Part III: Go Make Them With Your Living
Part IV: And Mark Them With Your Dead

But I must table the idea before I give myself the chance to get too excited about it. All else must be suppressed in the name of Project TROIKA!