Favourite Poems 5 - 'Ulysses' by Lord Alfred Tennyson

 

This is one of my favourite poems, and it is certainly one that I love to read out. But it was also a strong favourite of Cro's too, but sadly one that she couldn't read out any more. She could listen to it but not bring herself to say the words, except for a few beautifully euphonious snatches in the middle of it.

An the reason she couldn't read it out is linked to the photo above. This is Cro and her entire family back in the garden of Ashton House, Cambridge, where they had all grown up. But this is not long before her brother Alec died of cancer at the age of 20 or 21. He was diagnosed with the then-deadly and still very serious Ewings Sarcoma and died after several months of hard treatment. Cro used to come up from London to visit him and one night shortly before he died he asked her to read this poem out to him. Which may have been the last time she read it out loud.

The poem is an expression of the joy of living and the desire to live, not for its own sake, but for the glory of the things that you will do, and the knowledge that you will do them. You may well see how it resonates even more strongly with me than it did when I first heard it. I think my mother said this was also one of the poems that her younger brother Tommy used read out when they were trying to get their tea into them around the table at Stannington. "Oh pack it in Tommy and use your breath to cool your porridge!" But Tommy knew the value of a good poem and was not to be denied. 

What makes it even better and stronger in my opinion is that the words are put into the mouth of a very unreliable narrator, Ulysses, who is dead set on going off on a new adventure and is quite Andrew Tate enough to describe himself as 'by this still hearth, among these barren crags, matched with an aged wife' without missing a beat. Ulysses is bombastic and not really very nice to anyone in his descriptions, except perhaps his crew, and he has a record of losing several of them on his adventures. 

But the fact that even an unlikeable figure can put real glory and passion into this paean to life means much. It is life! Can you not see it. There are many memorable phrases working the theme. How about this one:

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

His hunger and his knowledge that breathing is not the same as living. You have to go out and do something or you have betrayed your own life and the very idea of life itself. And it doesn't have to be a sea voyage to the West, but just go out and do something. Don't just sit there. There are places, people, sunrises, tunes, Stag beetles crawling in June, misted cobwebs hanging in a November morning. Go and do, go and see. 

And at the end of the poem, after Ulysses has given the most milk-toast praise possible of his son Telemachus, who will now be king (Gee, thanks Dad and I love you too...), he gets onto the real business of his theme. It is dull to 'rust unburnished, not to shine in use' and Ulysses is not going to leave his sword in his scabbard (in whatever way we take that). He is going off on one last road trip, which we assume will be his last and one way trip, like any recent Robert De Niro film you have seen or several Brit movies of the last few years. 

But he does describe it nobly and you are persuaded that this is the right thing, whether you take a galley, or an interrail ticket or a one way trip to a Yoga camp in Thailand. Just go out and do it, live it, because only by living do you become and stay yourself. And if you have responsibilities, yes you have to keep them too, but try and call in favours. Do not let your obligations become an excuse. Can you get seven days respite? Get your boots on an head for the highlands. Only a weekend? When did you last go to a rave.  The point is to keep moving forwards. Because remember that you and your homies are exactly what he describes in the last lines:

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.

DON'T YIELD.

Ulysses

By 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,

'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.