Ulysses by Alfred
Tennyson
Full Analysis by a linguist
Original Text
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 forever
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.
Analysis of the poem
This poem was written by
the great Victorian poet Alfred Tennyson. This poem takes the form of dramatic
monologue since it is entirely spoken by a single character, Ulysses or
Odysseus, who is reflecting his own reality in his own words. Some critics say
that this poem might be considered as halfway between epic and elegy since it
discusses the heroic legendary character of Ulysses on the one hand and on the
other hand it is a sad narration or an elegy over the past victories and
glories of Ulysses which he mourns in this poem.
As
for the line-by-line semantic analysis of the poem, it is found that Ulysses is
mourning his current state at home. Ulysses who spent almost 20 years away in
the far seas is finally home, yet it is not the kind of home nor the kind of
welcome he expected from his own people. In the beginning of the poem, Ulysses
is stating that there is no use in his staying in his kingdom as an “idle king”
in a castle which is nothing but pieces of rocks or “crags”. He is mourning his
current state as an old king who is ruling the kingdom beside his old wife. He
is no longer Ulysses the conqueror who fought the Trojan War and who brought unprecedented
victories and glories. Ulysses is
