James Baquet

As I grow older I am struck by certain poems that didn’t “hit me” as a younger man.

One of these is “Ulysses” by the British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. It records the (imagined) musings of the aged hero Odysseus (here using the Roman form, Ulysses) as he sits by his hearth back in Ithaca.

You may remember that Odysseus was a hero of the 10-year Trojan War, as reported in Homer’s “Iliad.” He was the “clever” one who conceived of the Trojan Horse that allowed the Greeks to enter and overthrow the city.

On his way home after the war he was blown off-course and spent 10 more years wandering the Mediterranean Sea, an experience from which we get the word “odyssey” (the title of Homer’s book about his adventures).

Now, however, those 20 years are behind him, and he’s bored, judging cases for his people (“a savage race”) and thinking of the wife — for whom he and his son Telemachus strove against 100 suitors — as “an aged wife.”

“I cannot rest from travel,” he says as he reviews some of his experiences of enjoyment and suffering, “both with those That loved me, and alone,” whether stranded on land or fighting stormy seas.

This has earned him fame — “I am become a name” — but now, “How dull it is to … rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!” like a sword that has been set aside. “As tho’ to breathe were life!” he exclaims: simply being alive is not really living!

He then considers his doughty son Telemachus, to whom he will leave his kingdom. He, Odysseus reflects, will make a good ruler, perhaps because he lacks imagination. He is “centred in the sphere/ Of common duties.” They are different types, he says: “He works his work, I mine.”

Now the old hero turns his thoughts to the harbor he can see down below his palace: “There lies the port;” and “the dark, broad seas.” He thinks to his sailors, “You and I are old,” but there are adventures still to be had: “‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.” They will sail west, he says, “beyond the sunset, and the baths/ Of all the western stars” until they reach “the Happy Isles,” where dwell the dead, like their old friend Achilles. Although their “heroic hearts” have been “Made weak by time and fate,” they are still “strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Vocabulary:

Which word above means:

1. give up

2. stuck

3. thought up

4. boring

5. work hard at something

6. not polished

7. field of activity

8. brave and determined, but boring

9. private thoughts

10. fireplace