(4) ALFRED LORD TENNYSON –

ULYSSES (1842)

“I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me”.

Well there’s a job description for you!

Alfred Lord Tennyson – archetypal poet of Victorian literature and poet laureate.

And his Ulysses – poem in blank verse and dramatic monologue. Dramatic monologue to whom is not clear, but by whom is of course the classical hero of Iliad and Odyssey, Odysseus, or as the Romans called him, Ulysses.

Companion poem to his similarly Homeric “The Lotus Eaters” but complete opposite in tone and thought – where “The Lotus Eaters” resists the heroic call to action for slacking off and, well, eating lotus (because we’re just so wasted, man), “Ulysses” accepts it and indeed issues it

“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”

Tennyson often tended to the heroic, particularly in the Victorian mold – which can stick in the modern craw a little, as with “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (although it is damn fine poem and eminently quotable). Even Ulysses has been accused as “part of the prehistory of imperialism” and admittedly its protagonist does sound a little like a “colonial administrator”

However, Ulysses is particularly effective – and emotive – as that last call to heroic action, literally riding (or sailing) off into the sunset in one’s own twilight.

“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”.

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)