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Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ULYSSES

The speaker, Ulysses or Odysseus, king of the island of Ithaca and father to Telemachus is one of the Greek princes who had taken part in the Trojan War. After the fall of Troy he had gone through a long series of adventures (of which Homer’s Odyssey treats), before returning home to his country and his faithful wife Penelope. After many years of peaceful rule he is now about to say his final farewell to Ithaca. The ghost of Tiresias had once prophesied that after his return Ulysses would set out again on a mysterious voyage (cf. Odyssey, 11:100-137); Homer does not elaborate this last voyage. In Dante’s Inferno, however, the soul of Ulysses, punishes for his desire to penetrate the mysteries of nature and of heaven, tells how he met his death while travelling into the unknown west in search for knowledge. He recalls the words which he had addressed his crew when they had been about to cross the limit of the habitable world: "O brothers, who through a hundred thousand perils have reached the west! Do not want to deny, to this so short waking of your senses which yet remains, the experience, in following the sun, of the world that has no people. Think of where you come from; you were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge." (Inferno, 26:112-120).

ULYSSES

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched 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 enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with
those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and
when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed 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, govern-
ments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battles 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 wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose
margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though 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 through 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 toiled, 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 that we touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and
though
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.

Vocabulary

line
1 to profit von Nutzen sein
2 hearth d. Herd, d. Feuerstelle
barren crags unfruchtbare Klippen
3 matched with married to
to mete to measure
to dole to give out
4 savage wild, unzivilisiert
5 to hoard horten, hamstern
to feed sich ernähren, füttern
7 to the lees bis zur Neige
10 scudding drifts jagende Strömungen
rainy Hyades Sterngruppe, die nach antiker Vorstellung Regen verursacht
11 to vex aufwühlen
12 to roam umherschweifen
16 peers Adlige, Ebenbürtige
18 arch (Tor) Bogen
19 to gleam schimmern
23 unburnished unpoliert
24 to pile häufen
28 vile schändlich
30 to yearn sich sehnen nach
32 the utmost bound d. äußerste Grenze
35 to discern wahrnehmen
36 prudence Klugheit
37 rugged rauh
38 to subdue unterwerfen
40 decent anständig, schicklich
42 meet angemessen
adoration Anbetung, Verehrung
44 to puff blähen
45 to gloom verdrießlich aussehen
46 to toil sich abplagen
wrought von: to work
51 ere before
53 unbecoming unpassend, unschicklich
to strive kämpfen, streiten
55 to wane abnehmen
58 to smite the furrows die Furchen schlagen (fig)
59 my purpose holds my resolution stands firm
65 to abide bleiben
68 temper d. Temperament
70 to strive kämpfen
to yield aufgeben

Working with the text
1. Who is speaking?
2. To whom is he speaking?
3. How old is he?
4. Where is he?
5. What is he preparing to do? Why?
6. What does Ulysses think of his wife, his son, and the people of his kingdom?
7. Explain the image/comparison in ll. 19-21!
8. Do you see any links/similarities between the ideas expressed in this poem and the philosophy of life that Keating advocates in "Dead Poets Society"?