Ulysses
A dormant king has little profit,
By this still hearth, among these barren rocks,
Accompanied by an elderly lady, I’m a mete and a dole
Unequal laws to a savory race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feeding, and I do not.
I cannot rest from traveling: I will drink
Life for the enemies: Always I’ve enjoyed
Great, greatly suffered, both with those
That loved me, and on my own, ashore, and when
Scroing Thro drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much I saw and knew; cities of men
And morals, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And the drunken delight of a fight with my peers,
Far on the plains of windy Troy singing.
I’m part of everything I’ve met;
And yet, every experience is a bow where ‘
Gleams the untravell’d world whose edge fades
Forever when I move.
How boring it is to pause, stop,
To rust without burning, not to shine in use!
Like tho to breathe was life! Life stacked on life
Everyone was too little, and one for me
There is little left: but every hour is saved
Of that eternal silence, something more,
Bring new things; and he was fierce
For about three suns to store and hide myself,
And this gray spirit yearns for desire
To follow information like a sinking star,
Beyond the most bound of human thought.
This is my son, Telemachus myself,
To whom do I leave the scepter and the island, –
Good love of me, insightful to achieve
This labor, by a slow pause to make light
Rough people, and soft degrees of turn
Reduce them to the useful and the good.
The most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of ordinary duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Worship meeting for the gods of my home,
When I’m gone. He works his work, I work.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Sometimes it is worthwhile to revisit some of the old memorable poems of English literature. This one is Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses”, a famous dramatic monologue in blank verse. “Ulysses”, written in 1833 and first published in 1842, is highly acclaimed in Victorian poems, and Tennyson (1809-1892), among the most respected and popular English poets. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1850 (succeeding William Wordsworth), and served until 1893.