Ulysses

    I used to play handball at a local athletic club that was frequented by retired police and firemen, ex-prize fighters, and WWII veterans.  About once a month, some 70 something year old guy would have a heart attack on the court and get carted away to the morgue.  All the other old guys thought it was a great way to go...to be battling away against some young buck (Handball is a strenuous and somewhat dangerous sport!) rather than withering away in front of a TV.


    This poem is spoken by Ulysses, Odysseus in Greek, an old man who used to be a wild , active, passionate hero, but now finds himself an administrator concerned with mundane exigencies.  (Like a high school English teacher?)  I mean the guy had the word for a wild lengthy adventure, odyssey, named after him. He doesn’t want to die behind a desk. 

Monday, August 22, 2011

Alfred,Lord Tennyson : Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king1,

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 Hyades2

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, governments,

Myself not least, but honoured of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy3.

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 grey spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This 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 we shall touch the Happy Isles4,

And see the great Achilles5, 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.

Note, he feels like his subjects are little better than animals.  Meting and doling are basically what a parent does when making sure each kid gets the same amount of candy at a birthday party for 5 year olds.  Also, nobody in town seems to remember his heroism.


“I will drink life to the lees” is a great line.  The lees are what’s at the bottom of a barrel of wine.. He’s going to make sure he doesn’t miss any of the good stuff.

His old heroic life was a rollercoaster ride.  Now he’s afraid of losing all his highs and lows. (I know; I stole that line from an old song.)

See, he’s a name for always roaming.  He is odyssey.

In Wisconsin, we have had an Odysseus. His name is Bret Favre.  After he had done it all - Super Bowls - MVP’s - injuries - wild successes and ignominious failures - he wanted to get back out there and strap on the pads one more time, even when his beard was grey.

Another great line... there’s always another experience out there, gleaming and beckoning.

He’s comparing himself to a sword that gets rusty when it’s not used and cared for.

He loves experience so much that even an extra life, a life piled on life, wouldn’t be enough.  He begrudges the loss of even an hour of encounters with the new.

It sounds like he’s been king for three years and is itching to get away, to die seeking new knowledge of the world.

His son is a born administrator: prudent, patient, decent, reliable... Ulysses can leave him in charge and head out.

His old friends, although I don’t know who they’d be since everyone but he died in The Odyssey, are waiting to get back on board and live the wild, free, dangerous life.

Remember this when your grandparents get feisty!  There’s more honour and dignity in staying active until death.

He made Poseidon, the god of the sea, angry when he poked out the eye of Polyphemus, the cyclops. So for nine years he strove against a god.

They smite the furrows, the waves.  with their oars.

Many myths refer to islands in the west where heroes go when they pass from this world.  Think of King Arthur’s Avalon, or Frodo’s last voyage.  How cool, to search out those islands and see the old heroes like Achilles. He’s seeking death, rather than waiting around for death to find him.  No hospice.  No intravenous tubes dripping into him.  he will not go gentle into that goodnight. (See Dylan Thomas.)

I swear, as an old man, these last lines both inspire me and make me weep.  Sure, I’m not the young buck I was. Sure, crummy stuff has happened, like it does to everyone. But that doesn’t mean I have to relegate myself to watching reruns of M.A.S.H.  Like Ulysses, I can strive.  That, in part, is what this blog is all about.