ItвЂ™s in startling contrast to the modern taste in mourning poems, which favours the вЂIвЂ™m not really dead, IвЂ™ve just popped next door for a cuppaвЂ™ approach.

His medium is a man three times his own age who is stubbornly refusing to go gentle into that good night, and whatвЂ™s more heвЂ™s doing it in some of the most beautiful and concise blank verse ever written:ДЇrom that eternal silence, something more, Here is an intensely shy and private young man (he was just 24 when he wrote the poem) shattered by his friendвЂ™s sudden and premature death, trying to find his way through the fog of grief. In his incisive introduction to Oxford University PressвЂ™s excellent new edition of Tennyson вЂ“ Alfred Tennyson: The Major Works вЂ“ Adam Roberts refers to the вЂaching precisionвЂ™ of Ulysses, and I couldnвЂ™t come up with a more accurate phrase if (in the words of Dorothy L Sayers) I worked it out on both hands for a fortnight. I felt rather as St Paul must have done on the road to Damascus. I found the quotation (that famous closing line, of course) вЂ¦ and then my eye was drawn to the body of the poem. I first encountered Ulysses when I was about 13 or 14 and I thought it was stuffy, incomprehensible and b-o-r-i-n-g вЂ¦ It was only some 20 years later that I stumbled upon the poem again by accident whilst verifying the source of a quotation for a quiz. In common with many people of my age I was force-fed Tennyson and Wordsworth at school. Over the years it has passed into the canon of 19th Century classics its famous closing words adopted as a motto by numerous schools and other organizations from Victorian times onwards вЂ“ most notably (in a slightly altered form) by the Outward Bound Trust. The poem was finally published in 1842 and unusually for Tennyson, who frequently reworked his poems before publication, it was published as he had originally written it, with no amendments. It was more written with the feeling of loss upon me than many poems in вЂ In MemoriamвЂ™. There is more about myself in вЂUlyssesвЂ™, written under the sense of loss and that all had gone by, but that still life must be fought out to the end. Tennyson learned of Arthur HallamвЂ™s death on October the 1st, 1833.

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.ДЄnd so, in search of that вЂwork of noble noteвЂ™, they set sail one last time, on a one-way voyage from which he has no intention of returning. Some work of noble note, may yet be done, With that intent, he rallies his surviving shipmates:Дeath closes all: but something ere the end,

He remembers his youth: the people he has known, the places he has seen, the things he has done вЂ“ and then, the poem changes tone and pace and we realize that he has decided to head out to sea once more, leaving his son Telemachus to rule in his place. To rust unburnishвЂ™d, not to shine in use! He has, in his own words, вЂњbecome a nameвЂќ but that fame has brought him no contentment, and he is yearning to return once more to his old life: That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. MatchвЂ™d with an aged wife, I mete and dole His heroic, youthful exploits are no more than a distant memory: He is an old man вЂ“ an вЂњidle kingвЂќ вЂ“ presiding over his kingdom. The voice is that of Ulysses (known to the Greeks as Odysseus). It takes the form of a dramatic monologue. It was, however, in the painfully raw days immediately following HallamвЂ™s death in 1833 that Tennyson wrote Ulysses. The result was a handful of the most poignant, personal and lyrical poems in the English language, many of which were finally gathered together as one work and published in 1850 as In Memoriam: A.H.H.

Much of TennysonвЂ™s finest poetry is informed by grief.Дevastated by the sudden death of his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam, he tried to come to terms with his loss in the only way he knew how: through his poetry. Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

Ulysses poem