Ulysses by Tennyson: A Poem on Purpose and Aging ✨

A powerful poem on finding new purpose as we grow older.

Read by Victor Vertunni
-
In Tennyson's "Ulysses," an old adventurer is frustrated with domestic life and yearns to set sail again to explore the world.

Throughout the poem, Ulysses rails against his advanced years, and declares that although he and his fellow men are old, they still have the potential to do something noble and honourable before “the long day wanes.”

In this extract from the poem, he encourages his men to make use of their old age because “ ’tis not too late to seek a newer world.” He declares that his goal is to sail onward “beyond the sunset” until his death.

Perhaps, he suggests, they may even reach the “Happy Isles,” or the paradise of perpetual summer described in Greek mythology where great heroes like the warrior Achilles were believed to have been taken after their deaths.