Tennyson's Ulysses

I was never a great Tennyson fan.

Time for a revaluation?

Listen to "Ulysses".

Some great lines:

"I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees...

For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least...

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

                                  Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world...
                             
                                    my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset...

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."


Update, 5 March 2011: Tennyson's line chosen for the Olympics, 2012

Another poem on the Ulysses theme, by John Holloway:

From The Minute and Longer Poems, The Marvell Press, 1956