Myself Not Least

Tennyson's Ulysses, the poem and the character, came into my life about the same time as Homer's Odysseus did, and both of them came to stay. I met them as a schoolboy, age 15, the right time to choose your heroes.

There were plenty of heroes to choose from, as there always are. The priests in my Jesuit school proposed Jesus as a model, but even they must have known how hopeless that was. A boy's self-image may be grandiose, but it generally stops well short of Godhood.

Saints were another matter. We were treated to lurid tales of the Jesuit martyrs, quite a few of whom died after prolonged and picturesque torment at the hands of loathsome agents of the evil English Queen, but not before delivering brilliant and impassioned final speeches. (The evil queen was the first Elizabeth, whose other attributes got little attention in our Catholic curriculum.) Even better were the eight North American Martyrs, 17th Century French Jesuits who were gradually dismembered and otherwise tormented before being killed by literal howling savages. (Or so we called them in my high school years, the early 1950s; it would be several years before we started calling them Native Americans.)

Saints, at least such robust ones, are perfect heroes for adolescent boys. At that age, boys are natural romantics, and piety is one of the many forms their passion takes. (Up to a point, of course: The Jesuits also tried to sell us on imitating St. Aloysius, a model of "purity," by which was meant a denial of sexuality so extreme that good Saint Al would not have anything whatever to do with any women, even his mother, lest he form an impure thought. He died very young, which was okay with me and my classmates. We thought he was a sicko, and we were right.)

In my own case, piety came and went in waves, like undulant fever. The periods of remission grew more frequent, and at last the disease burned itself out, leaving me a reasonably healthy skeptic. But I remained, through and long after adolescence, a full-blown Romantic, a sucker for heroes.

Enter Odysseus, first in the person of Ulysses, his Roman name, as presented by Tennyson. I'm almost certain the famous poem was in the anthology we used as a text in third-year English, the year I turned 16. (I went to a fairly highfalutin high school, a long time ago. I don't want to know what kids read in school now.)

Now, this would make a better story if I could call up a picture of the beloved teacher guiding our class into and through this poem, but I can't. I have very few such memories. I must have had fine teachers, given the sheer amount of stuff I can recall from those years. They got that stuff between my ears somehow, and did it in a way that made me keep it there.

But if you're looking for a picture of some Midwestern Mr. Chips, I'm afraid I must disappoint you. I can recall quite a few of my teachers' names and faces, but those great teaching moments, those masterstrokes of pedagogical genius that opened new worlds for me—sad to say, if there were any, I can't replay them now.

At least, I can't recall such a moment in connection with "Ulysses." Some other time I should dredge my memory and give long-overdue thanks to some remarkable teachers. For now, though, back to the text.

I assume that our teacher started off by telling us to read the poem for tomorrow's class, and I assume that we glanced at it and groaned, "It's so long." At least, to a high-school kid's attention span it seems long. Later I would be astonished at its miraculous compression. And I assume that I saved it for last among my homework chores, drudging through the math and writing any exercises I had been assigned before turning to the easy stuff, like reading things that would be covered in class. A quick skim would suffice.

I no longer have the anthology we used for that course, but it's a safe bet that the poem was supported by a paragraph or two of headnotes, some glosses of "hard" words, and a couple of not very searching questions at the end. The headnotes would have told me who Ulysses was, would have summarized The Odyssey in about three sentences, and surely would have told me that Tennyson was a Great Poet. (I already knew that. The previous year we had slogged through one of the Idylls of the King—we read Gareth and Lynette, pretty romantic fare for kids at an all-boys Catholic school. See, I told you I went to a highfalutin high school.)

Anyway, the poem grabbed me right away. This may seem odd, given that its first lines are in the mouth of an old man:

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.

But maybe I thought that my situation, as a teenage student whose every heroic ambition was thwarted, was parallel to that of the age-hobbled King of Ithaka. In any case, Ulysses lost no time in getting closer to my heart with his next words:

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.

Now, that was more like it! I had not yet traveled much or far in body, but in spirit I had sailed and marched and ridden and flown to every named place on every map I could get my hands on. I was the reader for whom The National Geographic was printed every month. I lay on my belly, the big maps unfolded on the floor, and read the names in beautiful italic type: Zanzibar. Sumatra. Kamchatka. Yellow Knife. Rangoon. I roamed them all with my hungry heart. The ringing plains of windy Troy? I planted my finger on its place on the shore of what we still called Asia Minor. Right there the bronze spears flew. Delight of battle: I was drunk with it, at least at this remove.

I won't pretend that I knew, at age 15, what the next lines meant in any depth, but they sounded deep and noble:

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.

My own gray spirit yearned in desire to get out of stifling classrooms, into a ship, onto a horse, anything that could move me... where? Where Ulysses yearned to go: Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. That ought to be far enough to start with.

I saw myself in the next passage, poor tame Telemachus, bound to the daily round of useful tasks:

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.

Later, of course, I would read The Odyssey itself and meet a much bolder Telemachus, but for now I was indeed centered in the sphere of common duties, decent not to fail—especially in the area of grades. Thanks be to my household gods, I kept my solid A-Minus average. Useful and good, just like Telemachus. I wanted out.

And here the poem picks up the thread of thrilling struggle again, and here it caught me like a barbed hook. It has never let me go:

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,
'T is 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.

During the same year in which I fell under this poem's wild enchantment, I started to learn to read Greek. Now I would meet Homer's version of Ulysses, the hero Odysseus, the man of many turnings, all of them hard and all toward home. Our course was designed to get us reading The Odyssey as quickly as possible. Within a few weeks, with just enough grammar to get by, we were chanting the great hexameters and learning that words can indeed aspire to the condition of music, that there are, really and truly, magic words. My family laughed when they told me I spoke them in my sleep. I didn't laugh; I was stunned with gratitude. The daemon had blessed me. He blesses me still when I read the Greek verses or (better yet) recite them from memory.

Tennyson, by the way, knew his Homer, and you can hear the old poet's voice in some of his lines. "Much have I seen and known; cities of men / And manners, climates, councils, governments" is nearly a paraphrase of part of the Invocation to the Muse of The Odyssey. The lines "Push off, and sitting well in order smite / The sounding furrows" is nearly a literal translation of a passage I happen to know. (Indulge me; I don't get to show off my learning very often.) And the music of the whole thing recalls the sea-swing of the Greek poem. Tennyson's ear was astonishing.

At different times in my life, different aspects of both Tennyson's and Homer's heroes have spoken to me. Decent, dutiful Telemachus didn't seem so tame when I had to learn to survive in the world of daily work. Odysseus's dogged endurance in the face of Poseidon Earthshaker's wrath helped me face such unwinnable trials as the Army's hierarchy. And delight of battle? I was spared war, but no one escapes conflict. If we are lucky, we learn to fight in ways that leave our selves intact, and that is close enough to delight in battle for me. Odysseus has been at my side in all these struggles.

Now I am on the edge of old age, perhaps the age of Tennyson's Ulysses as he sets out on his last quest. Which line in the poem speaks to me now? The last, of course: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." I have invoked that mantra more than once. But another phrase has come to mean a surprising thing to me, has made me see a side of myself I hadn't recognized before. The line is this: "Myself not least, but honour'd of them all."

I have been lucky enough to meet and become friends with many excellent men and women, among them several writers whose names you ought to recognize. I will not name them, out of modesty. Nobody likes a name-dropper. But in their kindness, they have included me among their number, publishing bits of my work in places I am proud to point to: Myself not least.

Enough for now, and maybe for good. No one needs more than enough.

 

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,
'T is 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.
 
          —Alfred, Lord Tennyson