Ulysses (p.593)

In the poem, Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson tells the story of a once proud man who realizes his best days are behind him.  What made an impact on me was the way Ulysses chose to reminisce about his past and how he enthusiastically and realistically embraced his remaining days.  I’ve known people who have accomplished things in their lives and chose to rest on the past and grimly wait on death.  The deathwatch created a melancholy that began to overtake their identity and created a stench.  Ulysses is as far away from that as anyone could be.

Ulysses set the stage for his call to arms by noting, “By this still hearth, among these barren crags,/ Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole”. (lines 2&3)  We see a man who is ensconced in a den, sitting by a hearth, growing cold as he grows old.  His spouse cannot keep him warm and there must not be any warmth between them.  The fact that there is no fire in the hearth depicts the stale state of his situation.

Knowing his situation and knowing what drives him and puts a spark in his life, Ulysses professes, “I cannot rest from travel: I will drink/ Life to the lees”. (lines 6&7)  He clearly wants to live his life to the fullest and not sit and wait on his life to end.  His relationships with his comrades bring a richness to his life and although he has seen good times and bad the alternative by not having them by his side is worse.  “all times I have enjoy’d/ Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those/ That loved me, and alone;”. (lines 8&9)  Despite his condition and through the high’s and low’s Ulysses has given it his all and reaped a benefit or been stung.

“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 for ever when I move.”( lines 18-21)  I thought that statement by Ulysses sums up what every young person feels as they move into adulthood.  The statement of an old Ulysses captured the enthusiasm of a young person who realizes that all they are is a function of every experience they’ve had through life.  Those experiences, however, are simply a passage into a new world with new experiences that have no boundary.  Each time a limit is approached, it disappears into new experience with new archways to traverse.

Although Ulysses has seen and done many things he is wise to know that sitting on the past is a sure way to expedite the end.  “How dull it is to pause, to make an end,/ To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!” (lines 23&24)  It was said a little more bluntly by Neil Young when he sang, “It’s better to burn out than it is to rust.”  The statement is clear in both versions.  Ulysses wants to shine and to be a useful person and not a rusty, useless anchor.

The desire to live life and to pursue knowledge while remaining vital is more difficult in old age than it was while Ulysses possessed the blessings of youth.  “And this gray spirit yearning in desire/ To follow knowledge like a sinking star,/ Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.” (lines 30-33) Ulysses wanted to learn through experience what others learned through books.  Ulysses wanted to learn for himself things that others might not know.  That thirst for knowledge and experience matches Ulysses’ earlier statement that all experience is an arch through which he wanted to travel.  The more he learns and experiences, the more there is to learn and experience.

“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,”. (lines 50-52) Despite Ulysses’ old age, he maintains his honor and dignity through his desire to keep moving forward.  He clearly says what his plan is and what his goals include by seeking the participation of his mates, “Come, my friends,/ ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” (lines 56 &57)  “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,”. (lines 59-63)  Ulysses makes no promise of what is to come from his new adventures.  He clearly says it could end in death or in bliss.  He knows from his past travels that love and loneliness are available but he chooses to seek love and happiness in spite of the unknown result.

In the end Ulysses makes what might be the most important statement of all.  If it’s not the most important statement, it was the one that made the biggest impact on me.  “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.” (lines 56-70)  That proud commentary by a proud man doesn’t stink of arrogance or pride.  It speaks loudly of a vibrant, energetic soul.  The shell of the man might have been weakened by age but his heart continued to beat loudly.  His realization that the heart is what mattered and the will was the driving force was the very thing that made him human and immortal at the same time.