Ulysses

By Alfred Tennyson

“Ulysses” is Alfred Tennyson’s 1833 dramatic monologue in which the aging Greek hero, home in Ithaca, resolves to leave his throne and sail west on one last voyage. Written in the weeks after the death of his closest friend, Arthur Hallam, and published in 1842, its 70 lines end with one of the most quoted lines in English: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Our reading: the poem is far stranger than its motivational last line. Ulysses may be a hero refusing to fade or an old man abandoning everyone who depends on him, and the ship never actually leaves the dock. Tennyson lets both readings stand.

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Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

Years after the Trojan War and his long voyage home, an old Ulysses is restless in Ithaca. He finds it pointless to rule a people he considers dull, beside an aging wife, and he cannot stand the idea of ending his days idle by the fire. He remembers a life of travel, battle, and fame, and he still hungers for new experience.

He hands the kingdom to his son, Telemachus, who is suited to the patient work of governing. Then he turns to the old sailors who served with him and urges them to launch the ship once more and sail west beyond the sunset, even if the voyage kills them. The poem ends on his resolve: to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The Poem

Tennyson’s poem is given here in full, following the text of his Poems (1842).

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 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,
’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.

Background

Arthur Hallam, Tennyson’s closest friend from Cambridge and his sister’s fiancé, died suddenly in Vienna in September 1833, at the age of 22. The news reached Tennyson on October 1, and he finished “Ulysses” on October 20. It was published nine years later in his Poems of 1842. Tennyson later said there was more of himself in this poem than most readers realized: it was written “under the sense of loss and that all had gone by, but that still life must be fought out to the end.” The poem’s defiance is grief turned outward.

Most readers assume the source is Homer, but Tennyson’s Ulysses comes mainly from Dante. In Canto 26 of the Inferno, Ulysses is in Hell among the false counselors, and he tells how his hunger to see the world beyond its known limits led him and his crew on a final voyage west to their deaths. Dante condemns the very restlessness that Tennyson’s speaker celebrates. Knowing that, the poem’s beautiful call to sail beyond the sunset looks less like simple heroism and more like something to admire and distrust at once.

Analysis and Themes

The last line of “Ulysses” has been carved on memorials and printed on posters as pure encouragement. The poem around it is stranger: a portrait of a man who may be a hero or a deserter, speaking some of the finest blank verse in English. Its greatness is that it will not tell you which.

Hero or Deserter

Listen to how Ulysses describes his home. His people are “a savage race, / That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.” His wife, Penelope, the faithful center of the Odyssey and the reason he fought for years to get home, is dismissed in three cold words: “an aged wife.” The throne he fought to reclaim is now an idle burden.

The voyage he proposes is magnificent, but look at what it is: a king walking away from his subjects, his marriage, and his duties because they bore him, and calling it a refusal to “rust unburnish’d.” The poem lets him sound heroic, and it also lets us notice that heroism and selfishness are speaking the same words.

The Faint Praise of Telemachus

The coolest passage in the poem is the handoff to his son. Ulysses calls Telemachus “blameless,” “decent,” and “centred in the sphere / Of common duties.” Each word is praise with the air let out of it. “Common duties” are exactly the life Ulysses has just declared beneath him. The passage ends with a flat, dividing line: “He works his work, I mine.” It is the kindest possible way of saying his son is not interesting enough to come along.

The Voyage That Never Begins

For a poem about restless motion, nothing in it moves. Ulysses speaks for 70 lines and never takes a step. “There lies the port,” he says, and “Push off,” but the ship is still at the dock when the poem ends. The whole monologue is a man on the shore talking about leaving.

What he wants is not a destination. The “untravell’d world” fades “For ever and for ever” as he moves toward it, so it can never be reached. What he wants is motion away from stillness, away from “that eternal silence,” which is plainly death. He even admits the voyage may “wash us down.” Read beside the grief that produced it, the poem is less a call to adventure than a man talking himself into surviving one more day.

Form and Technique

“Ulysses” is a dramatic monologue in blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameter: “the LONG day WANES: the SLOW moon CLIMBS: the DEEP.” It is one of the founding examples of the form in English, alongside the monologues of Robert Browning. The form works by self-revelation: one speaker addresses a listener and, in justifying himself, reveals more than he means to. Tennyson never steps in to judge Ulysses. The reader has to do the judging, which is why the poem can be read two opposite ways.

The poem falls into three verse paragraphs: Ulysses alone with his discontent, the handoff to Telemachus, and the speech to his sailors. Long sentences run on across line endings, mimicking the forward push he craves, then pull up against hard stops in mid-line: “Death closes all: but something ere the end.” The final line is almost all one-syllable words, with four verbs that beat like a drum: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” It is the sound of conviction, which is not the same as the sound of truth, and the poem knows the difference.

Notable Lines

Three passages carry the poem from its restless desire, through its coldest moment, to its famous close.

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.

Lines 19 to 21

The most beautiful image in the poem and the key to its psychology. The horizon recedes as fast as you approach it, so the point was never arrival.

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

Line 43

A few flat words dispose of his son and the whole life of duty he stands for. The poem’s ambivalence is packed into this one line.

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.

Lines 68 to 70

Tennyson’s most famous lines, usually quoted alone as uplift. In context, they are spoken by an old man rallying other old men toward a voyage that may drown them, and that doubleness keeps the ending from being a slogan.

Themes

Four ideas drive the poem, all shaped by age and loss.

Aging. Ulysses and his sailors are old, and the poem asks how to live when most of life is behind you.

The quest for knowledge. Ulysses wants “To follow knowledge like a sinking star,” beyond the limits of human thought.

Duty and desire. Telemachus stays to do his duty, and Ulysses leaves to follow his desire, and the poem sets the two lives side by side.

Death and perseverance. “Death closes all,” but the speaker insists that something worthwhile can still be done before the end.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about Tennyson’s poem.

What Is “Ulysses” by Tennyson About?

It is about the aging hero Ulysses, bored with ruling Ithaca, who decides to leave his kingdom to his son and sail west on one last voyage. He urges his old sailors to join him, determined “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

When Did Tennyson Write “Ulysses”?

He finished it on October 20, 1833, less than three weeks after learning that his friend Arthur Hallam had died. It was published in 1842.

What Type of Poem Is “Ulysses”?

It is a dramatic monologue, a poem spoken by a single character to a listener. It is written in blank verse, which is unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Who Is Ulysses in Tennyson’s Poem?

Ulysses is the Roman name for Odysseus, the Greek hero of Homer’s Odyssey. Tennyson imagines him years after his return home, old and restless, drawing on Dante’s version of the hero in the Inferno.

What Is the Theme of “Ulysses”?

The main theme is the refusal to stop striving in old age, even in the face of death. The poem also questions that ideal, since Ulysses abandons his family and duties to pursue it.

Glossary

These older words and classical references may need explaining.

• mete and dole (line 3): Measure out and hand out, here meaning to administer laws.
• lees (line 7): The dregs at the bottom of a wine cask; to drink “to the lees” is to drain it completely.
• Hyades (line 10): A cluster of stars that ancient sailors linked with the rainy season.
• meet (line 42): Fitting or proper; “meet adoration” means due reverence.
• sounding furrows (line 59): The roaring troughs the oars cut in the sea.
• Happy Isles (line 63): In Greek myth, the islands of the blessed in the far west, where heroes went after death.

In Popular Culture

The poem’s last line has become a motto for explorers, athletes, and fictional spies alike.

Antarctica: The line “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” is carved on the memorial cross on Observation Hill for the explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his companions, who died returning from the South Pole in 1912.

London 2012: The final line was inscribed on a wall in the athletes’ village at the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Skyfall (2012): In the James Bond film, Judi Dench’s M recites the poem’s closing lines at a government inquiry, moments before an attack on the hearing.

Related Poems

If this poem holds you, these four sit closest to it in form, source, or feeling.

• Tithonus by Alfred Tennyson: The dark twin of “Ulysses,” another aged classical figure in a monologue, granted endless life without youth, who longs to die where Ulysses longs to live.
• In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred Tennyson: The long elegy for Arthur Hallam that the same grief produced over 17 years.
• My Last Duchess by Robert Browning: The other great Victorian dramatic monologue, in which a speaker condemns himself with his own words.
• Invictus by William Ernest Henley: A later Victorian poem of defiance, with the same refusal to yield to fate.