''I thank you for your four decades of friendship,'' he told Stevens.

As his colleagues paid tribute, Stevens sat comfortably in one of the chambers' sumptuous leather chairs, resting with an ease he'd lacked during the five weeks this fall when he faced a federal jury on corruption charges. There, he appeared shrunken and diminished, hidden by an oversized table in the middle of the federal courtroom.

In the Senate on his final day, however, Stevens' words and actions were evocative of his time as a lion of the chamber. He appeared humble, yet fully conscious of his place in the history of his state and his nation, and he told fellow senators that he continues to marvel at his rise from hardscrabble origins in Depression-era Indiana and California to his 1968 appointment to the Senate.

''I really must pinch myself to fully understand that I'm privileged to speak on the floor of the United States Senate,'' Stevens said. ``Coming from the boyhood that I had, I could never even have dreamed to be here today.''

Stevens, who was convicted Oct. 27 on seven counts of failing to disclose gifts and thousands of dollars in home renovations from a powerful political contributor, had just a week to campaign for re-election. He lost his re-election bid Tuesday in the final ballot count, and says he'll return to Alaska.

He made just one mention of his conviction during his farewell remarks, saying that he doesn't look back much but he hopes that his appeals will clear him one day of the corruption conviction.

''I still see the day when I can remove the cloud that currently surrounds me,'' he said. He didn't say whether he'd seek a pardon from President George W. Bush.

Stevens sounded one final defiant note, reminiscent of the man who donned an ''Incredible Hulk'' necktie whenever he needed to fight the biggest battles in Washington for Alaska. His motto, he reminded his colleagues, always was ``to hell with politics, just do what is right for Alaska. And I tried every day to live up to those words.''

Then, Stevens uttered his final words on the Senate floor: ``I yield the floor for the last time.''

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