Summary
Summary Ulysses - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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A full analysis of the Poem Ulysess for IEB English home language poetry syllabus
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Ulysses- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)Biographical Information:
• Poet: Tennyson - wrote the poem to deal with his sense of loss after his best
friend, Arthur Hallam, died young.
• Speaker: Ulysses - fictional ancient Greek Warrior King who spent 10 years in the
Trojan war and 10 years sailing home. When he returned to Ithaca, however, he could
not give up his sense of adventure.
• Tennyson speaks through the character of Ulysses (2 voices in the poem are of the
poet and the speaker).
Meaning/message:
• Two struggles: Ulysses is struggling with ageing. Tennyson is struggling with death
and grief.
• The poem ultimate response is that both are INEVITABLE, you cannot fight against
them, but you cannot win. However, that does not mean you ever give up the quest for
knowledge and new experiences. This search is what defines meaningful life.
Imagery/Figures of Speech/Diction:
• Images of nature that symbolize a spiritual journey e.g. stars and sunset.
• Includes lines that have become so famous they are considered APHORISMS -
short statements of deep meanings. Proverbs - sayings of wisdom*
Structure:
• Dramatic monologue giving us a sense of the inner world of the speaker (and the poet)
• Free verse/blank verse (free verse with a set metre/beat) - doesn’t rhyme = Ulysses
sense of freedom and his breakaway from social structures.
• Enjambment: sense of energy and flow.
• Lots of sound devices and internal rhyme = show connection and harmony.
• Dramatic punctuation
• Slow; steady, assertive rhythm.
Tone/mood:
• Reflective; contemplative; hopeful; inspirational.
, ‘Ulysses’ Critique of existing rather than living
Ulysses sense of identity & life philosophy
1. It little profits that an idle king, Adventure
2. By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Ageing
3. Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
4. Unequal laws unto a savage race,
5. That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
6. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
7. Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
8. Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
9. That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
10. Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
11. Vext the dim sea: I am become a
name;
12. For always roaming with a hungry heart
13. Much have I seen and known; cities of men
14. And manners, climates, councils, governments,
15. Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
16. And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
17. Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
18. I am a part of all that I have met;
19. Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
20. Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
21. For ever and forever when I move.
22. How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
23. To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
24. As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
25. Were all too little, and of one to me
26. Little remains: but every hour is saved
27. From that eternal silence, something more,
28. A bringer of new things; and vile it were
29. For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
30. And this gray spirit yearning in desire
31. To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
32. Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
33. This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
34. To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
35. Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
36. This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
37. A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
38. Subdue them to the useful and the good.
39. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
40. Of common duties, decent not to fail
41. In offices of tenderness, and pay
42. Meet adoration to my household gods,
43. When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
44. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
45. There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
46. Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with
47. me—
48. That ever with a frolic welcome took
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