Ulysses
Sunday, August 12th, 2007The two recent blogs about sailing by Lisa Matte and Dick Evans got me thinking about Ulysses. Not the Ulysses of Homer’s Odyssey — he certainly didn’t find sailing relaxing. And not James Joyce’s Ulysses, either — which is, by the way, the top reference in a Google search on the name (poor Homer). They made me think about my favorite poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and his poem of that name.
Some of my favorite lines from that poem–which was written in 1842, by the way–are “Come, my friends, / ‘Tis 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 the western stars, until I die” and the famous ending, “Though much is taken, much abides; and though / We are not now that strength which in old days / Moved heaven and earth, 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.”
Bobby Kennedy used to quote that ending frequently in his campaign speeches. Whatever you think of Bobby Kennedy — if you’re old enough to remember the 1968 campaign — he, like his brother, had a way with words. Compare that with the platitudes-by-sound-bite campaigns of today’s multitude of candidates …
It’s enough to make you want to jump on a wind-powered sailing vessel and not come back until Election Day.
