Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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,
5		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
10		Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades ₁
		Vext 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, ₂
15		Myself not least, but honour'd 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 wherethro'
20		Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
		For ever and for ever when I move.
		How dull it is to pause, to make an end, ₃
		To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
		As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life
25		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,
30		And this gray 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, ₄
		To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—
35		Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
		This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
		A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
		Subdue them to the useful and the good.
		Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
40		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:
45		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;
50		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:
55		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
60		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, ₅
		And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
65		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
70		To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.



		₁ Virgil, 'Æn'., i., 748, and iii., 516.

		₂ 'Odyssey', i., 1-4.

		₃'Cf'. Shakespeare, 'Troilus and Cressida':—

		Perseverance, dear, my lord,
		Keeps honour bright: To have done, is to hang
		Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail
		In monumental mockery.


		₄How admirably has Tennyson touched off the character of the Telemachus of the 'Odyssey'.

		₅ The Happy Isles, the 'Fortunatæ Insulæ' of the Romans and the [Greek: ai t_on Makar_on naesoi] of the Greeks, have been identified by geographers as those islands in the Atlantic off the west coast of Africa; some take them to mean the Canary Islands, the Madeira group and the Azores, while they may have included the Cape de Verde Islands as well. What seems certain is that these places with their soft delicious climate and lovely scenery gave the poets an idea of a happy abode for departed spirits, and so the conception of the _Elysian Fields_. The _loci classici_ on these abodes are Homer, Odyssey, iv., 563 _seqq_.:— [Greek: alla s' es Elysion pedion kai peirata gaiaes athanatoi pempsousin, hothi xanthos Rhadamanthus tae per rhaeistae biotae pelei anthr_opoisin, ou niphetos, out' ar cheim_on polus, oute pot' ombros all' aiei Zephuroio ligu pneiontas aaetas _okeanos aniaesin anapsuchein anthr_opous. [But the Immortals will convey thee to the Elysian plain and the world's limits where is Rhadamanthus of the golden hair, where life is easiest for man; no snow is there, no nor no great storm, nor any rain, but always ocean sendeth forth the shrilly breezes of the West to cool and refresh men], and Pindar, 'Olymp'., ii., 178 'seqq'., compared with the splendid fragment at the beginning of the 'Dirges'. Elysium was afterwards placed in the netherworld, as by Virgil. Thus, as so often the suggestion was from the facts of geography, the rest soon became an allegorical myth, and to attempt to identify and localise the Happy Isles is as great an absurdity as to attempt to identify and localise the island of Shakespeare's 'Tempest'.]

Robert Clark

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Ulysses

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