Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Ulysses & Crossing the Bar

 

A) Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Ulysses & Crossing the Bar

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born August 6, 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England, where his father was the rector. He was the fourth of twelve children. Alfred was a bright and talented boy, and the fine physique and manly good looks which characterized him as an adult were noticeable even at an early age.

 

Until he was eleven, Tennyson attended a grammar school in the nearby town of Louth, of which he later had very unhappy memories. From then on, he remained at home, where he studied under the close supervision of his scholarly father. Tennyson demonstrated his literary talents quite early, and by the age of fourteen had written a drama in blank verse and a 6000-line epic poem. He was also interested in the study of science, particularly astronomy and geology. In 1827, a small volume entitled Poems by Two Brothers, containing works by Alfred and Charles Tennyson, as well as a few short contributions by Frederick Tennyson, was published in Louth.

 

In 1828, Tennyson enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge. Despite his intelligence and good looks, he was excessively shy and was quite unhappy. After a while, however, he joined an informal club known as "the Apostle" which counted among its members the most outstanding young men at the university. Here he was praised highly for his poetry, and he made the acquaintance of Arthur Henry Hallam, a brilliant young man, who was to become his closest and dearest friend. In 1829, Tennyson won the Newdigate Prize for poetry.

 

In 1830, while Tennyson was still an undergraduate, his volume Poems, Chiefly Lyrical was published, but it made no significant impression of the reading public. That summer he and Hallam went to Spain with the romantic notion of joining a band of insurgents in the Pyrennes. They successfully delivered a large sum of money collected on behalf of the rebels, but there is no record of their having participated in any military engagement. In 1831, after his return, Tennyson was forced to leave the university without taking his degree, due to the death of his father.

 

Afterward, Tennyson lived quietly with his family at Somersby. He spent his time working on his poems and engaging in various outdoor sports and activities. Hallam was engaged to one of Tennyson's sisters and spent a great deal of time at the family home, so that the two young men were able to be together often.

 

In 1832, Poems by Alfred Tennyson was published, in which early versions of many of his finest pieces appeared, including "The Lady of Shalott," "The Palace of Art," "The Lotos-Eaters," "Oenone," and "A Dream of Fair Women." The quality of the poems in the volume was not constant, and many of them were overly sentimental or lacking in polish. As a result, despite the fine lyrics mentioned above, the book received a very harsh critical reaction. Tennyson had never been able to stand criticism of his work, and he was deeply hurt. For a long time he wrote nothing, but he finally resolved to devote himself to the development of his poetic skill.

 

In 1833, Hallam died suddenly while in Vienna. The shock of this tragic loss affected Tennyson severely. He withdrew completely from all his usual activities and spent his time in mourning and meditation. During his bereavement he thought often about his affection for Hallam and about such problems as the nature of God and the immortality of the soul. During this long period of anguish and grief, Tennyson composed many very moving elegies and lyrics on the death of his beloved friend. These were eventually collected and published in 1850 and are considered one of the greatest elegaic works in English literature, In Memoriam: A.H.H.

 

During the next few years, Tennyson continued to live with his family, which had now moved to London, and to apply himself to his studies and writing. He became engaged to Emily Sellwood, despite the objection of her parents, but felt it was impossible for them to marry because his financial resources were so limited. In 1842, a two-volume collection of his work appeared, containing many revisions of earlier poems, besides a number of excellent new ones, including "Morte d'Arthur," "Ulysses," and "Locksley Hall." At last Tennyson was recognized as one of the leading literary figures of the period and was acclaimed throughout England.

 

At this time Tennyson lost his small inheritance through a foolish investment and suffered a serious nervous breakdown as a result. Upon his recovery he was provided with an annual pension by the British government. In June 1850, after an engagement of thirteen years, Tennyson and Emily were married. Later that same year Tennyson was appointed to the post of poet laureate, succeeding Wordsworth. Among the most notable poems he wrote while holding that office are the "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" (1852) and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854).

 

Despite his fame, Tennyson remained shy and moved from London to a more secluded home. He worked intently on his Arthurian poems, the earliest of which had been published in the 1832 volume, and the first four idylls appeared in 1859. These rapidly became his most popular works, and he continued to revise and add to them until the Idylls of the King reached its present form in the edition of 1885.

 

The remainder of Tennyson's life was uneventful. He and Emily had a son, whom they named Hallam. Tennyson was hailed as the greatest of English poets and was awarded numerous honors; he received an honorary degree from Oxford University in 1885 and was offered the rectorship of Glasgow University. In 1883, he was raised to the peerage by Queen Victoria and was thereafter known as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth. He was the first Englishman to be granted such a high rank solely for literary distinction. Among his friends Tennyson counted such noteworthy people as Albert, the Prince Consort, W. E. Gladstone, the prime minister, Thomas Carlyle, the historian, and Edward FitzGerald, the poet.

 

All his life Tennyson continued to write poetry. His later volumes include Maude, A Monodrama (1853), Enoch Arden (1864), Ballads and Poems (1880), Tiresias and Other Ballads (1885), Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Demeter and Other Poems (1889), and The Death of Oenone (published posthumously in 1892). He also wrote a number of historical dramas in poetic form, among which is Queen Mary (1875), Harold (1877), Beckett (1884), and The Foresters (1892).

 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was the most highly regarded poet of his period and the most widely read of all English poets. The quality of his work varied greatly, and much that he wrote is of little interest today, for he included in his poetry themes and subjects that were of intense interest only to the Victorians. Tennyson's thought was often shallow and dealt with matters of fleeting significance, but his technical skill and prosody were unsurpassed. Perhaps the most perceptive evaluation of his work is embodied in Tennyson's own remark to Carlyle:

I don't think that since Shakespeare there has been such a master of the English language as I — to be sure, I have nothing to say.

 

Tennyson died at Aldworth House, his home in Surrey, on October 6, 1892, at the age of eighty-three. He was buried in the Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey, and the copy of Shakespeare's play Cymbeline, which he had been reading on the night of his death, was placed in his coffin.

 

Ulysses

Introduction

In October of 1833, Alfred Tennyson learned of the untimely death of his close friend and Arthur Henry Hallam. Hallam's death devastated Tennyson; seventeen years later he wrote a long poem about it called In Memoriam. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, however, he wrote "Ulysses."

 

You might have heard of Ulysses, or Odysseus, as he is called in Homer's Odyssey, the epic poem that narrates his long (10 years!) journey home from the the Trojan War. According to Homer, once Odysseus made it home he still had to take one more voyage, though that voyage is only mentioned, never made. Dante's Inferno, a much later work about a poet's journey through Hell, actually describes this voyage, though in a slightly different way; in Dante's account, Ulysses never returns home to Ithaca and instead chooses to continue sailing, as he does in Tennyson's poem. But unlike Tennyson, Dante condemns Ulysses for irresponsible adventure-seeking.

 

Tennyson's poem fuses both Homer and Dante's versions of the story; in the poem, Ulysses has made it home (Homer), but he wants to go sailing around the world again (Dante). The poem is a long monologue spoken by Ulysses detailing how bored he is in Ithaca (an island off the coast of Greece) and how he wants to get as much out of life as he can.

 

Tennyson's presentation of the Ulysses myth reflects to some degree his own desire to get over Hallam's death and keep living; it wasn't enough for Tennyson to achieve a state of ease and tranquility (like Ulysses did when he got back to Ithaca). He also wanted to keep living life, taking both its ups and downs in stride in the same way as Ulysses. Indeed, Tennyson famously claimed that the poem described in part his own "need of going forward and braving the struggle of life" after his friend's death.

 

 

Text

Ulysses.

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.

 

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; 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.

 

Summary

Ulysses (Odysseus) declares that there is little point in his staying home “by this still hearth” with his old wife, doling out rewards and punishments for the unnamed masses who live in his kingdom.

 

Still speaking to himself he proclaims that he “cannot rest from travel” but feels compelled to live to the fullest and swallow every last drop of life. He has enjoyed all his experiences as a sailor who travels the seas, and he considers himself a symbol for everyone who wanders and roams the earth. His travels have exposed him to many different types of people and ways of living. They have also exposed him to the “delight of battle” while fighting the Trojan War with his men. Ulysses declares that his travels and encounters have shaped who he is: “I am a part of all that I have met,” he asserts. And it is only when he is traveling that the “margin” of the globe that he has not yet traversed shrink and fade, and cease to goad him.

 

Ulysses declares that it is boring to stay in one place, and that to remain stationary is to rust rather than to shine; to stay in one place is to pretend that all there is to life is the simple act of breathing, whereas he knows that in fact life contains much novelty, and he longs to encounter this. His spirit yearns constantly for new experiences that will broaden his horizons; he wishes “to follow knowledge like a sinking star” and forever grow in wisdom and in learning.

 

Ulysses now speaks to an unidentified audience concerning his son Telemachus, who will act as his successor while the great hero resumes his travels: he says, “This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I leave the scepter and the isle.” He speaks highly but also patronizingly of his son’s capabilities as a ruler, praising his prudence, dedication, and devotion to the gods. Telemachus will do his work of governing the island while Ulysses will do his work of traveling the seas: “He works his work, I mine.”

 

In the final stanza, Ulysses addresses the mariners with whom he has worked, traveled, and weathered life’s storms over many years. He declares that although he and they are old, they still have the potential to do something noble and honorable before “the long day wanes.” He encourages them to make use of their old age because “ ’tis not too late to seek a newer world.” He declares that his goal is to sail onward “beyond the sunset” until his death. Perhaps, he suggests, they may even reach the “Happy Isles,” or the paradise of perpetual summer described in Greek mythology where great heroes like the warrior Achilles were believed to have been taken after their deaths. Although Ulysses and his mariners are not as strong as they were in youth, they are “strong in will” and are sustained by their resolve to push onward relentlessly: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Form

 

This poem is written as a dramatic monologue: the entire poem is spoken by a single character, whose identity is revealed by his own words. The lines are in blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter, which serves to impart a fluid and natural quality to Ulysses’s speech. Many of the lines are enjambed, which means that a thought does not end with the line-break; the sentences often end in the middle, rather than the end, of the lines. The use of enjambment is appropriate in a poem about pushing forward “beyond the utmost bound of human thought.” Finally, the poem is divided into four paragraph-like sections, each of which comprises a distinct thematic unit of the poem.

 

Commentary

In this poem, written in 1833 and revised for publication in 1842, Tennyson reworks the figure of Ulysses by drawing on the ancient hero of Homer’s Odyssey (“Ulysses” is the Roman form of the Greek “Odysseus”) and the medieval hero of Dante’s Inferno. Homer’s Ulysses, as described in Scroll XI of the Odyssey, learns from a prophecy that he will take a final sea voyage after killing the suitors of his wife Penelope. The details of this sea voyage are described by Dante in Canto XXVI of the Inferno: Ulysses finds himself restless in Ithaca and driven by “the longing I had to gain experience of the world.” Dante’s Ulysses is a tragic figure who dies while sailing too far in an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Tennyson combines these two accounts by having Ulysses make his speech shortly after returning to Ithaca and resuming his administrative responsibilities, and shortly before embarking on his final voyage.

 

However, this poem also concerns the poet’s own personal journey, for it was composed in the first few weeks after Tennyson learned of the death of his dear college friend Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833. Like In Memoriam, then, this poem is also an elegy for a deeply cherished friend. Ulysses, who symbolizes the grieving poet, proclaims his resolution to push onward in spite of the awareness that “death closes all” (line 51). As Tennyson himself stated, the poem expresses his own “need of going forward and braving the struggle of life” after the loss of his beloved Hallam.

 

The poem’s final line, “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,” came to serve as a motto for the poet’s Victorian contemporaries: the poem’s hero longs to flee the tedium of daily life “among these barren crags” (line 2) and to enter a mythical dimension “beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars” (lines 60–61); as such, he was a model of individual self-assertion and the Romantic rebellion against bourgeois conformity. Thus for Tennyson’s immediate audience, the figure of Ulysses held not only mythological meaning, but stood as an important contemporary cultural icon as well.

 

“Ulysses,” like many of Tennyson’s other poems, deals with the desire to reach beyond the limits of one’s field of vision and the mundane details of everyday life. Ulysses is the antithesis of the mariners in “The Lotos-Eaters,” who proclaim “we will no longer roam” and desire only to relax amidst the Lotos fields. In contrast, Ulysses “cannot rest from travel” and longs to roam the globe (line 6). Like the Lady of Shallot, who longs for the worldly experiences she has been denied, Ulysses hungers to explore the untraveled world.

 

As in all dramatic monologues, here the character of the speaker emerges almost unintentionally from his own words. Ulysses’ incompetence as a ruler is evidenced by his preference for potential quests rather than his present responsibilities. He devotes a full 26 lines to his own egotistical proclamation of his zeal for the wandering life, and another 26 lines to the exhortation of his mariners to roam the seas with him. However, he offers only 11 lines of lukewarm praise to his son concerning the governance of the kingdom in his absence, and a mere two words about his “aged wife” Penelope. Thus, the speaker’s own words betray his abdication of responsibility and his specificity of purpose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crossing the Bar

Introduction

"Crossing the Bar" is about death. Tennyson spent nearly forty years on top of his game as Poet Laureate of Great Britain. After this stretch, he was feeling the heat in 1889. He was 80 years old (that's pretty old, even by our standards today), and he knew he didn't have a whole lot of time left.

 

Legend has it that during a short voyage across the Solent—the body of water that separates mainland England from The Isle of Wight (where Tennyson had a home)—Tennyson got sick. He eventually recovered, but this illness was enough to remind the poet laureate that nobody lives forever. He writes a great poem, "Crossing the Bar."

 

"Crossing the Bar" is about not only the inevitability of death, but also about accepting it, about looking at death as not an end, but only a transition. There's no denying that the poem is a little sad, but the speaker seems pretty mellow, even peaceful, if you think about it. For him, death isn't just about heartbreak and tragedy. It's also about hope.

 

In the poem's final lines, he tells us that he might finally get to meet his "Pilot" (God) "face to face." So for him, death isn't the shutting down of the body, but rather a journey that might lead to a new beginning. It's an exploration, an adventure, and there's no ticket necessary.

 

 

 

Text

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea,

 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

 

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

 

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.

 

 

 

 

Summary

The speaker heralds the setting of the sun and the rise of the evening star, and hears that he is being called. He hopes that the ocean will not make the mournful sound of waves beating against a sand bar when he sets out to sea. Rather, he wishes for a tide that is so full that it cannot contain sound or foam and therefore seems asleep when all that has been carried from the boundless depths of the ocean returns back out to the depths.

 

The speaker announces the close of the day and the evening bell, which will be followed by darkness. He hopes that no one will cry when he departs, because although he may be carried beyond the limits of time and space as we know them, he retains the hope that he will look upon the face of his “Pilot” when he has crossed the sand bar.

 

The second and fourth stanzas are linked because they both begin with a qualifier: “but” in the second stanza, and “for though” in the fourth. In addition, the second lines of both stanzas connote excess, whether it be a tide “too full for sound and foam” or the “far” distance that the poet will be transported in death.

Form

 

This poem consists of four quatrain stanzas rhyming ABAB. The first and third lines of each stanza are always a couple of beats longer than the second and fourth lines, although the line lengths vary among the stanzas. The ABAB rhyme scheme of the poem echoes the stanzas’ thematic patterning: the first and third stanzas are linked to one another as are the second and fourth.

 

Both the first and third stanzas begin with two symbols of the onset of night: “sunset and evening star” and “twilight and evening bell.” The second line of each of these stanzas begins with “and,” conjoining another item that does not fit together as straightforwardly as the first two: “one clear call for me” and “after that the dark!” Each of these lines is followed by an exclamation point, as the poet expresses alarm at realizing what death will entail. These stanzas then conclude with a wish that is stated metaphorically in the first stanza: “may there be no moaning of the bar / When I put out to sea”; and more literally in the third stanza: “And may there be no sadness of farewell / When I embark.” Yet the wish is the same in both stanzas: the poet does not want his relatives and friends to cry for him after he dies. Neither of these stanzas concludes with a period, suggesting that each is intimately linked to the one that follows.

 

Commentary

Tennyson wrote “Crossing the Bar” in 1889, three years before he died. The poem describes his placid and accepting attitude toward death. Although he followed this work with subsequent poems, he requested that “Crossing the Bar” appear as the final poem in all collections of his work.

 

Tennyson uses the metaphor of a sand bar to describe the barrier between life and death. A sandbar is a ridge of sand built up by currents along a shore. In order to reach the shore, the waves must crash against the sandbar, creating a sound that Tennyson describes as the “moaning of the bar.” The bar is one of several images of liminality in Tennyson’s poetry: in “Ulysses,” the hero desires “to sail beyond the sunset”; in “Tithonus”, the main character finds himself at the “quiet limit of the world,” and regrets that he has asked to “pass beyond the goal of ordinance.”

 

The other important image in the poem is one of “crossing,” suggesting Christian connotations: “crossing” refers both to “crossing over” into the next world, and to the act of “crossing” oneself in the classic Catholic gesture of religious faith and devotion. The religious significance of crossing was clearly familiar to Tennyson, for in an earlier poem of his, the knights and lords of Camelot “crossed themselves for fear” when they saw the Lady of Shalott lying dead in her boat. The cross was also where Jesus died; now as Tennyson himself dies, he evokes the image again. So, too, does he hope to complement this metaphorical link with a spiritual one: he hopes that he will “see [his] Pilot face to face.”