Ulysses+-+Alfred,+Lord+Tennyson

"Ulysses" is a poem written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, first published in //Poems// in (1842). The 1842 //Poems// was the second volume he released by that name, after the 1833 edition that received unfavorable reviews and discouraged him from continuing to write poetry for nearly ten years. The 1842 //Poems// was written in the aftermath of the death of his close friend, Arthur Henry Hallam ([|with whom he may have been in a homosexual relationship]), while he was also working on "[|In Memoriam]", which would take him 17 years to complete, and was finally published in 1850 (Literature Network). Hallam and Tennyson were members of a philosophical society called the Apostles (Carlone), and Hallam was engaged to be married to Tennyson's sister Emily, when he died of illness in 1822. Tennyson named his first son after Hallam (Everett "Chronology"). Some of Tennyson's best poetry was written about Hallam's death, including "Ulysses", "In Memoriam", "The Passing of Arthur", and "[|Tithonus]" (Everett).

The 1842 //Poems//' success made Tennyson extremely well-known and popular. In 1845 he received a Civil List pension of £200 a year, and in 1850 he was established as Poet Laureate, succeeding Wordsworth, and establishing him as the preeminent poet of the Victorian era (Literature Network).

Ulysses is a 70 line poem comprised of three blank verse (unrhyming iambic pentameter) stanzas. It is a dramatic monologue from the point of view of the Greek mythological hero Odysseus/Ulysses, taken from the 26th Canto of Dante's //Inferno// where Ulysses is in the Limbo of the Deceivers:

//"Neither fondness for my son nor reverence for my aged sire nor the due love which ought to have gladdened Penelope could conquer in me the ardour which I had to become experienced in the world and in human vice and worth. I put out into the deep open sea with but one ship and with that small company which had not deserted me.... I and my companions were old and tardy when we came to that narrow pass where Hercules assigned his landmarks. 'O brothers,' I said, 'who through a hundred thousand dangers have reached the West deny not to this the brief vigil of your senses that remain, experience of the unpeopled world beyond the sun. Consider your origin, ye were not formed to live like Brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.... Night already saw the other pole with all its stars and ours so low that it rose not from the ocean floor'"// (Literature Network "Ulysses")

Of the poem, Tennyson said in 1891 "Ulysses was written soon after Arthur Hallam's death, and gave my feeling about the need of going forward, and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply than anything in In Memoriam" (Tennyson //Works//, quoted McLuhan). In the poem, Ulysses says "//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//" (Tennyson Ln 49-52). The poem encompasses both a yearning and a nostalgia, looking back at past accomplishments, and looking forward at the future, and appears not to contain any of the condemnation present in the original text by Dante.

The full text of Ulysses follows:

//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 enjoy'd // //Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those // //That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when // //Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For always roaming with a hungry heart // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Much have I seen and known; cities of men // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And manners, climates, councils, governments, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And drunk delight of battle with my peers, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am a part of all that I have met; // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For ever and forever when I move. // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">How dull it is to pause, to make an end, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Were all too little, and of one to me // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Little remains: but every hour is saved // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">From that eternal silence, something more, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A bringer of new things; and vile it were // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For some three suns to store and hoard myself, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And this gray spirit yearning in desire // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To follow knowledge like a sinking star, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. //

//<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> This is my son, mine own Telemachus, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,— // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This labour, by slow prudence to make mild // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Subdue them to the useful and the good. // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of common duties, decent not to fail // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In offices of tenderness, and pay // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Meet adoration to my household gods, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. //

//<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me— // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">That ever with a frolic welcome took // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Death closes all: but something ere the end, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Some work of noble note, may yet be done, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">'T is not too late to seek a newer world. // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Push off, and sitting well in order smite // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of all the western stars, until I die. // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We are not now that strength which in old days // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One equal temper of heroic hearts, // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will // //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. //


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Works Consulted: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Literature Network, The. "Lord Alfred Tennyson." ( [])

Literature Network, The. "Ulysses." ([])

Everett, Glenn. "Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Brief Biography." The Victorian Web: 2004. ( [])

Everett, Glenn. "Alfred Lord Tennyson Chronology." The Victorian Web: 2003. ( [])

Carlone, Dominic. "Arthur Henry Hallam (1811-1833)." The Victorian Web: 2002. ( [])

Landow, George P. "Alfred Tennyson's "Ulysses"." The Victorian Web: 2013. ( [])

Tennyson, Lord Alfred. McLuhan, H. M., ed. //Works.// Representative Poetry Online, University of Toronto. ( [])

Tennyson, Lord Alfred. "Ulysses." The Poetry Foundation. ([])