Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson

So, as Brent mentioned in his introductory post, we at the Fifty Books Project love poetry, when it is in books especially, and since April is National Poetry Month it is my goal to blog one poem a day--that is, reproduce it here, for you, and explain a little bit about why I love it. I have no set list of poems in mind; it well may be that my own cluttered set of personal favorites numbers far below thirty-one and if so then I look forward to seeking out new ones. For the first installment I thought I'd talk about what may be my favorite poem ever (though I reserve the right to use this phrase again in the future), Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses":

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.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle —
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

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, and opposed
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,
'Tis 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 though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Part of what I love about "Ulysses" is the flame kindled by my Classics background, but it's a remarkable poem no matter how you feel about The Odyssey. In it there are a couple handfuls of striking lines that become rooted in the mind, from the simple claim to glory, "I am become a name," to the four dogged verbs of the poems last lines.

The poem is a monologue by Ulysses, the crafty commander of the Trojan War who endeavors in The Odyssey to return home to Ithaka and his wife Penelope over the course of decades. Here Ulysses is ravaged by the desire to return to the sea and continue his adventures, and at the end sets sail "to follow knowledge like a sinking star."

The poem brims with the language of resoluteness and determination, but I would argue that Ulysses' mind is far from made up--see how he starts off with the savage denunciations of the home and wife he worked so hard to rediscover:

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.

The "aged wife" comes off as particularly vicious, as Penelope in The Odyssey has a saint's patience waiting for her husband return, but Ulysses who "has become a name" retains a youthfulness in his "hungry heart" that the domestic Penelope cannot imagine. But Ulysses returns to thoughts of home, and specifically to his son, only after letting his mind wander to the sea and adventure in the second stanza, the poem's very structure suggesting a man wandering between two possibilities.

Yet, though he has his doubts, it never seems possible that Ulysses will decide anything but to leave again; time is running out. "Ulysses" is fraught with death, and for him who "Life piled on life / were all too little," the only response is to live, once again, with great fullness:

...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.

I love "Ulysses" because it teaches us that there is always time enough to live, that mere seconds are valuable if they are lived wisely. Fear of death can make us frantic, but Ulysses' words are calm and measured, and when I have thought that time passed more quickly than my liking I have tried to remember them: "Tho' much is taken, much abides."

Ulysses' foil in all of this is his own son, who has none of his father's wandering spirit, but will make a better king for it:

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

I have heard some observe that Ulysses is all selfishness in this poem, and that it is Telemachus who gains stature by contrast, submerging himself in duty and denying his own spirit for the social fabric. But Tennyson's Telemachus has no spirit to deny; his soul is utilitarian and his greatest achievement is to "subdue" the wild races of Ithaka to the "useful and the good." What is this compared to the "equal temper of heroic hearts?" Who among us would really choose to be Telemachus over Ulysses?

Instead, I see "Ulysses" as one of the greatest affirmations of the individual spirit that we have. The poet is great because his greatness is unlike the greatness of others, and Ulysses' path is solitary, driving him from family and from home, but it bears the hope of beating back death for a short time; Telemachus' path is a sort of death-in-life.

There surely is some need for Telemachuses in our world, but their poetry is probably quite bad. Certainly no Telemachus could ever pen Ulysses' last words, his four-part mission, that bring me some measure of life when my spirit flags:

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.