I am writing this because, after reading my movie review last week of the Odyssey, a friend sent me a poem.

Let me warn you up front that if you hate poetry, you should skip to the sports section of the newspaper right now. But if occasionally, your soul yearns for combinations of words that the rest of us could never even dream of, then stay with me as we take a short stroll with Alfred, Lord Tennyson through Ulysses.

I am pretty sure I was introduced to this poem in high school. But life intervened, and until my friend Donna popped it into my mailbox the other day, I had completely forgotten it.

Before I begin, some of you out there, like me, might be musing, “I know who Odysseus is, but who is Ulysses?” Well … being blessed with more than one friend, my treasured erudite chum Mary, a Latin scholar, explained this to me.

Ulysses is the Roman name for Odysseus.

It’s that simple!

And that brings me back to Tennyson who, many centuries later, does not re-tell stories about Ulysses’s adventures. Instead, he introduces us into the mind of the elderly hero as he looks back upon his past, forward to his rapidly diminishing future, and ponders his fate.

Since I don’t have enough space here to recite the entire poem, I’ll just point out some of my favorite passages – stay with me. This stuff is gorgeous – and you can read it in its entirety later on the Internet (www.poetryfoundation.org) or get it out of the library.

To begin our verbal meanderings … and it really is remarkable when you consider that when Tennyson (1809 to 1892) wrote this poem about old age, he was only 24 years old … Ulysses has just returned to his kingdom, battered and worn after years of war and adventure.

Musing about his future as an “idle king” sitting by a “still hearth, among these barren crags, match’d with an aged wife,” he rebels and proclaims, “I cannot rest from travel • I will drink Life to the lees … I am become a name ▪ For always roaming with a hungry heart.”

Imagine Ulysses. Moving a little more slowly. Perhaps his eagle eyes no longer able to make out the details on the prow of a ship 20 miles at sea, or to hear the beat of an army’s drum five miles away, but having to listen to those around him incessantly chattering about golf courses, babysitting for grandchildren, and all-you-can eat buffets.

“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!”

No.

Never.

No monotonous retirement for one such as he.

I can imagine Ulysses overturning the chess boards, jigsaw puzzles, and bridge tables in the community room at the local senior citizen center, exclaiming: “…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.”

I TOLD you the language was gorgeous!

Okay. Now we have to consider home and hearth. If the paterfamilias decides to “follow knowledge like a sinking star,” who is going to take over the kingdom?

Well, our indefatigable hero has an answer for that, too.

“….my son, mine own Telemachus ▪ To whom I leave the scepter and the isle – Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill This labour … When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.”

What, then, of Ulysses?

“Old age hath yet his honor and his toil … Some work of noble note, may yet be done ▪ Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.”

Meaning: Don’t even think of asking me to give up my shield, my helmet, my spear, my ship. I’m not done yet.

“Come, my friends • 'T is not too late to seek a newer world … It may be that the gulfs will wash us down ▪ It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.”

And now, we get to Ulysses’ final, glorious proclamation. Take heed all of you out there. This is what you say to your spouse, your siblings, your children, your friends, and your old college roommate when they ask you why you are still working, and they urge you to slow down:

“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.”

Such language! Such heart! Such soul!

Sigh.

I wish I were Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2026. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit www.shellyreuben.com