Travel and discovery: 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield'
This poem imagines the Greek hero Ulysses as an old man, restless and bored, pining for the glorious adventures he had in his youth--10 years fighting in the Trojan War, then 10 more years trying to get back home to Ithaca. He reflects on what it means to travel, to discover new places and people, and to keep learning about the world right up until death.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 'Ulysses'
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' 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 gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
...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,
'T is 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 tho'
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.
What we love about this poem...
Can this old, fretful, impatient man really be the active, cunning, and bold hero of Homer's epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey? The genius inventor who came up with the Trojan Horse idea, which won the war for the Greeks? The man who cleverly outsmarted death a dozen or more times on his long voyage home, outwitting the Cyclops, defying the Sirens, escaping the land of the Lotus-Eaters, navigating the deadly Scylla and Charybdis?
He was so desperate and determined to get home to his wife and son, but here he is, just a few years later, bored and depressed by ordinary life. Tennyson's brilliant move is to pick the story up where Homer left off, and to give Ulysses the very human quality of yearning for something, and then as soon as the yearning is satisfied, becoming discontented.
But it's easy to forgive Ulysses. Who can resist his rousing call to embark on one last great adventure--the trip to end all trips?
To Read Alongside...
There have been brilliant literary 'takes' on Ulysses and his adventures, ranging from James Joyce's Ulysses (100 years old this year!) to Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad to Derek Walcott's Omeros. The ageing Ulysses makes a mesmerizing appearance in Circe by Madeline Miller. An exciting new translation of Homer's Odyssey, by Emily Wilson, came out a few years ago, refreshing the tale for new generations. And, if you enjoy graphic novels, check out the versions of Iliad and Odyssey by Gareth Hinds.
And from one of our curators, Dr Alex Paddock: If you are interested in the ‘age’ side, rather than specifically Homeric continuations, ‘The Wanderer’ pairs well here--it's an anonymous and likely older text from the 10th-century Exeter Book, in which an old man sits alone turning over in his mind the dwindling of his past glory and friendships. Like Tennyson’s Ulysses he uses metaphors of journeying to explain this quiet and still point of his life course.
About the author
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92) was one of the best-known poets of the Victorian age. This brief biography at the Poetry Foundation traces his life and work:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alfred-tennyson
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