Ulysses is restless in his old age. So tells us Tennyson in his poem named after the great hero. Ruling his city, trying to civilize the “savage race” that makes up his subjects is a dull life, a waste of his few remaining years. He had fought alongside the gods and great heroes such as Achilles “on the ringing plains of windy Troy,” and described it as drinking “delight.” After the war, his decade-long journey home—lasting as long as the war itself—was full of adventures, perils, and setbacks, as recounted in the Odyssey. He finally arrives home to clear the place out of suitors who have eaten its substance while seeking to marry his wife, assumed to be a widow. I won’t go into detail, but Tennyson assumes the reader’s familiarity with the stories about Ulysses, also known as Odysseus, from the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Ulysses wants to “drink life to the lees” like he did in the past. That is, to Ulysses, life, both “enjoy’d greatly” and “suffered greatly,” is to be savored like a good wine, not to be wasted in dull pause. So, he, perhaps as rugged and savage as the people he is tired of ruling, leaves his son Telemachus in charge, and sets forth to sea again in search of either death or new adventures. He recognizes the action of time on his body: “We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven,” but the nature of his character is unchanged: “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.” Whether Ulysses acts rightly, or whether he is abandoning duty and family for selfish ends, Tennyson doesn’t say outright. I suppose the reader is left to form his own judgment.
But the reader doesn’t need my commentary; the poem speaks for itself. It has been a long time since I last sought to memorize a poem, so I think I shall endeavor to commit this one to memory. As a reflection on old age, and perhaps as a reminder of the temptation to forsake duty for adventure, it will surely be a welcome companion as I increase in years.
Ulysses
Alfred Lord Tennyson
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
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,
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’
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.
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 thro’ 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 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.