Tennyson (Ulysses and Crossing the Bar)
Presented by: Fatima Tawfiq
**********************************************************
Tennyson Biography
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, is one of the most famous poets in English literature. Many of his poems are standard of 19th-century literature and are critical and popular favorites. The body of critical work on him is immense, and although some of his work is seen as too sentimental today, his intellectual contributions to poetry and metaphysics are undeniable.
Alfred Tennyson was born on August 5, 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire, where his father George was a clergyman. Young Alfred began writing poetry at a very early age, and published his first work "Poems by Two Brothers" at the tender age of sixteen.
In that same year of 1827 Tennyson entered Cambridge University, where he befriended Thackery and produced his second collection, "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical". He also met Emily Selwood, to whom he became engaged in 1839.
The Selwood family objected to the engagement, partly because of Tennyson's lack of money, and partly because his brother Charles was unhappily married to Emily's sister Louisa.
Tennyson poured his energy into writing, and his "Poems" of 1842 made him extremely popular. He let his doctors convince him to give up writing for a time because of his poor health, but the respite was temporary. In 1847 "The Princess" was another success, and two years later Tennyson married Emily in a secret ceremony.
When William Wordsworth died, the post off Poet Laureate became available. On the strength of Prince Albert's appreciation for Tennyson's In Memorium, he was given the position. One of his most popular and enduring works, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854), was just one of Tennyson's many poems which dealt with famous events in English history.
When Prince Albert died in 1861 Tennyson's epic "Idyll's of the King" was dedicated to him. The Idyll's, a retelling of the tale of King Arthur, were immensely popular with readers and equally unpopular with reviewers.

In his later years Tennyson tried his hand at plays, but his efforts were not well recieved. Queen Victoria offered him a baronetcy on several occassions, but the shy Tennyson was not induced to accept until 1884.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, died on October 6, 1892. To honour his request, his poem "Crossing the Bar" is always the last piece printed in any collection of his poems.
Tennyson’s Poetry
Tennyson’s poetic output covers a breadth difficult to comprehend in a single system of thematic: his various works treat issues of political and historical concern, as well as scientific matters, classical mythology, and deeply personal thoughts and feelings. Tennyson is both a poet of penetrating introspection and a poet of the people; he plumbs the depths of his own consciousness while also giving voice to the national consciousness of Victorian society.
As a child, Tennyson was influenced profoundly by the poetry of Byron and Scott, and his earliest poems reflect the lyric intensity and meditative expressiveness of his Romantic forebears. These early poems demonstrate his ability to link external scenery to interior states of mind. However, unlike the Romantics, whose nature poems present a scene that raises an emotional or psychological problem, Tennyson uses nature as a psychological category. In “Mariana,” for example, he uses Keatsian descriptions of the natural world to describe a woman’s state of mind; he conveys via his natural setting the consciousness of a woman waiting vainly for her lover, and her increasing hopelessness.
Not only is Tennyson a poet of the natural and psychological landscape, he also attends frequently to the past, and historical events. “The Lady of Shalott” and the poems within Idylls of the King take place in medieval England and capture a world of knights in shining armor and their damsels in distress. In addition to treating the history of his nation, Tennyson also explores the mythological past, as articulated in classical works of Homer, Virgil, and Dante. His “Ulysses” and “The Lotos-Eaters” draw upon actual incidents in Homer’s Odyssey . Likewise, his ode “To Virgil” abounds with allusions to incidents in the great poet’s Aeneid , especially the fall of Troy. Tennyson thus looked both to historical and mythological pasts as repositories for his poetry.
Tennyson’s personal past, too, figures prominently in his work. The sudden death of his closest friend Arthur Henry Hallam when Tennyson was just 24 dealt a great emotional blow to the young poet, who spent the next ten years writing over a hundred poems dedicated to his departed friend, later collected and published as “In Memoriam” in 1850. This lengthy work describes Tennyson’s memories of the time he spent with Hallam, including their Cambridge days, when Hallam would read poetry aloud to his friends: thus Tennyson writes, “O bliss, when all in circle drawn / About him, heart and ear were fed / To hear him, as he lay and read / The Tuscan poets on the lawn!” Tennyson grapples with the tremendous grief he feels after the loss of such a dear friend, concluding famously that “ ’Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.”
“In Memoriam” also reflects Tennyson’s struggle with the Victorians’ growing awareness of another sort of past: the vast expanse of geological time and evolutionary history. The new discoveries in biology, astronomy, and geology implied a view of humanity that much distressed many Victorians, including Tennyson. In Maud, for example, he describes the stars as “cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand/ His nothingness into man”; unlike the Romantics, he possessed a painful awareness of the brutality and indifference of “Nature red in tooth and claw.” Although Tennyson associated evolution with progress, he also worried that the notion seemed to contradict the Biblical story of creation and long-held assumptions about man’s place in the world. Nonetheless, in “In Memoriam,” he insists that we must keep our faith despite the latest discoveries of science: he writes, “Strong Son of God, immortal Love / Whom we, that have not seen they face, / By faith, and faith alone, embrace / Believing where we cannot prove.” At the end of the poem, he concludes that God’s eternal plan includes purposive biological development; thus he reassures his Victorian readers that the new science does not mean the end of the old faith.
Tennyson also spoke to his Victorian contemporaries about issues of urgent social and political concern. In “The Princess” he addresses the relations between the sexes and argues for women’s rights in higher education. In “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” he speaks out in favor of a controversial diplomatic maneuver, the disastrous charge on the Russian army by British troops in the Crimean War. Thus, for all his love of the past, Tennyson also maintained a lively interest in the developments of his day, remaining deeply committed to reforming the society in which he lived and to which he gave voice.

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.

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.
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 encamped, 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.
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.

This short but evocative poem is often placed at the end of volumes of Tennyson’s poems, as he requested. He wrote it in 1889 when he was 80 years old and recovering from a serious illness at sea, crossing the Solent from Aldworth to Farringford on the Isle of Wight, off the mainland of England. It is said that Tennyson composed it in twenty minutes. Tennyson’s illness and old age may have contributed to this very personal and memorable meditation on death.
The poem contains four stanzas of four lines each, with a traditional ABAB rhyme scheme. It is written as an elegy, utilizing an extended metaphor of a sailor crossing the sandbar between the tidal area and the sea to represent a human being passing from life to existence beyond death.
The poem opens by evoking the fall of night, a reference to the poet being in the twilight of his years. The evening star points his way, and he feels the “clear call” of death. He is almost ready; the poem is tinged with excitement and acceptance. He expects the tide will be full, carrying him smoothly and peacefully out of life, just as it carried him in. This process reflects his internal contentment with his absorption into the natural process of life and death. There should be “no moaning” when the time finally comes.
In the last two stanzas, the time has come; it is moments away from darkness. He expects no sadness, whether it is his or that of others, when he departs. The reason not to mourn is that he has hope to see his Pilot, that is, God, face to face once he has passed into the afterlife.
As many critics and readers have observed, this poem contains many of the same themes and images that the poet has used throughout his oeuvre. There is the sea voyage, the solitary mariner, the patterns of life and death, and the setting sun. Thus it combines themes from “Ulysses” and “Tithonus,” as well as other poems (including an allusion to Donne’s “Meditation 17,” from which “For Whom the Bell Tolls” is taken), to provide a final statement about death. In “Ulysses,” the hero yearns for life despite approaching death and fights vigorously against the quiet, complacent passing into the afterlife or even the nothingness that Tithonus would welcome. As critic David Sonstroem notes, “Tithonus” is about “rest and stasis rather than adventure and motion, where “adventure or aspiration is undesirable and unnatural.” Tithonus can no longer appreciate the journey or contemplate his existence with any hopefulness, whereas the poet of “Crossing the Bar” expresses optimism because he not only will reach the end but also may find what lies beyond.
Indeed, in “Crossing the Bar,” death is peaceful and natural, a welcome and fitting pause to a life lived well. In other poems that use a sea voyage as a metaphor for death, Tennyson presents it as more disturbing, more confusing; “The Lady of Shalott,” “Morte d’Arthur,” and “Lancelot and Elaine” are all examples of the poet not yet seeing such a voyage as peaceful. Sonstroem writes that “all these contradictions [among the earlier poems] vanish, yet all the allusions to the earlier poems retain their relevance: Tithonus’ longing for death is to be granted, yet the death is seen in terms of Ulysses’ desire—a sea-voyage of discovery.”
Some writers have chosen to see a bit of Hallam in the Pilot; after all, reflecting on his friend Hallam's death guided so many of Tennyson’s thoughts about death. But given Tennyson’s cultural context, it is very likely that the identity of the Pilot is the Christian God. Jesus is considered the pilot of the Church and guides the Christian’s life. Seeing God face to face is a Biblical theme. Furthermore, the wordplay of “crossing” a “bar” suggests the cross of Jesus, the transformational event that, in Christianity, enables people to be reconciled to God and reach Heaven, which is beyond the Earth’s “Time and Place.”