The Works of Tennyson :: :: University of Virginia Library

Carlyle wrote to me when he read Ulysses: “These lines do not make me weep, but there is in me what would fill whole Lachrymatories as I read.” Cf. Odyssey, xi. 100-137, and Dante, Inferno, Canto xxvi. 90 foll.:

Quando
Mi diparti' da Circe, che sottrasse
Me più d' un anno là presso a Gaeta,
Prima che sì Enea la nominasse,
Nè dolcezza di figlio, nè la pieta
Del vecchio padre, nè il debito amore,
Lo qual dovea Penelope far lieta,
Vincer poter dentro da me l' ardore
Ch' i' ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto,
E degli vizii umani e del valore;
Ma misi me per l' alto mare aperto
Sol con un legno e con quella compagna
Picciola, dalla qual non fui deserto.
L' un lito e l' altro vidi infin la Spagna,
Fin nel Marrocco, e l' isola de' Sardi,
E l' altre che quel mare intorno bagna.
Io e i compagni eravam vecchi e tardi,
Quando venimmo a quella foce stretta,
Ov' Ercole segnò li suoi riguardi,
Acciocchè l' uom più oltre non si metta;
Dalla man destra mi lasciai Sibilia,
Dall' altra già m' avea lasciata Setta.
“O frati,” dissi, “che per cento milia
Perigli siete giunti all' occidente,
A questa tanto picciola vigilia
Dei vostri sensi, ch' è del rimanente,
Non vogliate negar l' esperienza,
Diretro al sol, del mondo senza gente.
Considerate la vostra semenza:
Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
Ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza.”

The poem was written soon after Arthur Hallam's death, and it gives the feeling about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply than anything in In Memoriam.

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

Arcturum pluviasque Hyadas geminosque Triones.

Virgil, Aen. i. 744.

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;

Cf.

“quorum pars magna fui”

(Virgil, Aen. ii. 6).

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever 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,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows;

εξης δ' εζομενοι πολιην αλα τυπτον ερετμοις.

(A line frequent in Homer's Odyssey.)

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.