Tennyson::Life is Short

Life is short.

This post is all about life and how we all ought to take a look at our lives and make them worth living. Do we want to travel and see the world? Do we want to fight for our health? Do we want to see what life has in store? I, myself, definitely do not want to wait until my life is over. I want to live it to the fullest. I want to not be idle. A poem I read in Lit class has inspired me to be the person I know I can be. To do the things I want to do. Every experience, good or bad, shapes us to who we are.

In Tennyson's Ulysses, I believe we start to really see the sentiment when recalls what he and his men have done, how it has shaped him, and how it should inspire everyone to what he has done, avoid being idle.

                "I cannot rest from travel; I will drink Life to the lees.
               All times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly,
               both with those that loved me, and alone;"
His experience was a great one, and he has learn much from it, and he does not plan on stopping. He encourages his listeners to not be idle, but to travel and do things. This quite applies to all of us. We all worry that we won't have lived life to its fullest before we die. A famous author-unknown quote "Live as if there were no tomorrow" implies that we must not be idle, we must do everything we can before life is over. Life is too short.

Due to his travels, Ulysses became a great man, he became someone,

            "I am become a name; for always roaming
             with a hungry heart much have I seen and known...
             ...I am a part of all that I have met"

This quote, too, is something that applies to our daily lives, all of us. All that we have done through our childhood, through high school, college, families, careers--- all of it shapes who we are. All of our experiences, our ups and downs, the good and the bad have is a part of who we are. That is what Ulysses was saying in the above mentioned quotes.

There is so much sentiment in this poem. So much of Ulysses being worried about being an idle man and having his adventures behind him. All of it is a part of him.
 
       "My mariners, souls that have toiled,
      and wrought, and thought with me..
     ...Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old;
      old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
      Death closes all; but something ere the end,
      some work of noble note, may yet me done. "

Ulysses talks about being old is not the end, old men still have their honor and work to do. Old does not mean being too old to do things. Death is the end; not old. There is still time to live.

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Ulysses
 by Alfred Lord Tennyson

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.