Poem for Rob Gibb
Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Here is an audio clip of the first and last part of the poem. Some explanation follows if you are interested.
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:
…
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,
’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 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.
Some Background
One of my positions at New York Life in Toronto was Assistant VP of Human Resources. Among other things, I was responsible for corporate training. Back then, mid to late 1980s, IBM was launching an education program for youth called Illuminated Books and Manuscripts, that was delivered on large Laserdiscs. I was tasked to see if it could be adapted to train our employees. The program was amazing. It illuminated topics like Christopher Columbus, Music with Paula Abdul as one of the subject experts, and Martin Luther King’s “Letters from a Birmingham Jail”.
I particularly liked the section on poetry and I made a short VHS copy of the audio of part of the poem, Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Tennyson was going through a trying time in his life when he wrote the poem.
To properly understand the poem, you need a bit of background.
Ulysses has returned from the Trojan wars. His wife has grown old, his subjects don’t know him, and his son is a great administrator but not a warrior.
Ulysses is old and sees the end of life creeping up on him. The poetic metaphor says it this way, “The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices”.
He wants to go west with his warrior buddies to stay ahead of the coming darkness.
“Happy Isles” refers to dying and going to heaven.
I have only memorized the first few lines and the last section. I recite the poem when I catch myself feeling — old.