Ulysses was first published in 1842, like Break, Break, Break and The Two Voices, soon, after Arthur Hallam’s death, and it expresses the poet’s feeling about the need of going forward and facing life, despite the bereavement he has suffered. Ulysses was the legendary Greek hero, the story of whose heroic deeds and adventures is sung by Homer in his Odyssey.
However, Tennyson’s Ulysses is closely modelled on Dante’s Ulysses as sketched in the 26th Canto of the Inferno. The influence of classical poets, Homer and Virgil is seen in freezing and many verbal echoes. but despite this indebtedness. Tennysons’s treatment is original, and Ulyssess
“the noblest of all Tennyson’s classical poems” (Fowler).
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.
A Dramatic Monolouge
Ulysses is a dramatic monologue. It is dramatic because it expresses the feeling not of the poet, but of Ulysses, and it is monologue because only one person speaks throughout. The others merely listen to him. Ulysses, the hero of Trojan war returned to his island state of Ithaca after 20 years. he has been ruling his estate for some time, but the life of peace devoid of adventure, does not suit him. In the poem, he is supposed to be standing at the coast’of the sea, surrounded by his sailors, whom he exhorts to follow him in quest of more knowledge and experience.
Arguments in Favour of Travel and Adventure
He gives arguments after arguments in favour of a life of travel and adventure. First, the people of the island are uncivilised, the laws are unjust, and so he will not like to rule there. His wife has grown aged, and the people do not understand his real nature Secondly, he has grown used to a life of adventure, and the inactive life of a king does not suit him. He has visited many lands and known many people with their different habits and ways of life, but there are still many more lands to be seen, and he is eager to visit like to, “follow knowledge like a sinking star.” Human life is short and becomes rusted; one shines only in use. He has only a few more years to live, and he would devote them to the pursuit of as much knowledge and experience as possible.
As regards his island, he has no worry about its government. His son Telemachus is quite sensible and prudent, and he would look after the welfare of his state. He would give due worship to the gods, and would also take care of his old mother with love and tenderness. He is interested in the
ordinary, everyday duties of life, while he himself craves for travel and adventure. So, he would be quite happy to stay in the island and rule over it, while he himself would enjoy his life of adventure abroad.
Therefore, they must set sail with him that very night. In the past they have cheerfully faced together great dangers and difficulties, and they would also do so in the future. In the past they achieved much that was noble. No doubt, they have grown old, but noble achievement is possible even in old age. They would sail towards the west even beyond the western horizon. It is just possible that they would be drowned, but it is also possible that they may reach the Happy Isles, the abode of their dead heroes. They may be physically weak, but they are still strong in determination. So they would set sail, “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Different Interpretations
Ulysses is a complex work of art and as such is capable of different interpretations. It has been interpreted as an expression of the Victorian urge for action, for life, for excitement, for travel, adventure and discovery. But it has also been interpreted as an escape poem. Says John Pettigrew, “Ulysses is great if read as a poem expressive of an indomitable will, summoning up every reserve of resolute courage and seeking new worlds to conquer. But, as Tennyson’s situation at the time of its writing and the literary tradition that he évokes suggest, Ulysses is far richer than that. Indeed, its essential greatness stems not from the power of noble feeling, but from the complexity of characterization with its conflict of feelings.
That this is so is suggested strongly even by a cursory examination of Ulysses’ speech. He talks of noble work and shows us that Ithaca cries out for it, but he is idle and leaves leadership to Telemachus. He says that he is following knowledge and seeking fuller life, but he forces us to ask if he is not rather seeking escape from duty in unceasing activity, even in suicide. He is true to himself, but apparently false to his kingdom and his mariners. Is he, proud, or merely egocentric? Promethean, or Satanic? The responsible man of action, or the escapist? Is it he, or Telemachus, who is most like Arthur,
‘Ideal manhood closed in real man’? And the contradictions involved in what he says are reinforced by all the resources of a masterly poet.
The Poem: Its Artistic Merits
Ulysses is a noble poem concerned with character delineation rather than with the narration or action. It displays Tennyson’s command over language and his felicity of phrasing. He has said what he had to say in the fewest possible words. This makes the diction terse and epigrammatic. Many of the lines of the poem have passed into common everyday proverbs. Thus, we have to follow knowledge like a singing star to strive to seek to find and not to yield”, etc. Tennyson was a consummate artist and he chooses his the clever use of alliteration, liquid consonants ”, ‘m’ and ‘n’ and the bringing together of a number of vowel sounds, as in the following:
There lies the port, the vessel puffs her sail, / There gloom the dark broad seas.
The poem is written in blank verse which, specially in the last lines, acquires almost a Miltonic grandeur, and sweep and majesty of movement.