Tennyson, “Ulysses”

Mermin & Tucker, Victorian Literature, pg 399

“To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought” (31–32).

“To strive, to seek to find, and not to yield” (70).

In “Ulysses” Tennyson remakes the classical hero Odysseys, and casts him in the light of boredom. Odysseys finds himself getting everything he wanted, he spent the entirety of the Odyssey aiming to get back to his home, only to find than he does not like it there. He laments at staying home, and growls later in the poem “I am become a name.”

If one combines these two quotes, Tennyson implies that the true ambition of the hero is to follow knowledge, even if the pursuit of that knowledge is risky. The second quote is more or less the bumper sticker for the Victorian ethos, so of course it is monumentally important.