Tennyson: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)
by Alfred Tennyson
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Book Reviews of Tennyson: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: 'Tho much is taken, much abides' Ulysses above all
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a rich collection of the work of Tennyson, and those who care for his verse will derive great pleasure from it. For myself most of Tennyson's longer poems have been more skimmed and tasted by me than really chewed and digested. Tennyson lives as a poet to me primarily through one poem, 'Ulysses'. This poem to my mind perfectly embodies a certain heroic stance toward life. It does this in immortal lines. The poem tells the story of the great Ulysses returning home after having voyaged and become ' a part of all I have met' . He is now not the youth who set out in the beginning but an elderly veteran. He begins with , 'Though much is taken much abides' And so in mid-life or in late- life having come home he is not content to rest. But is an ' old man explorer' who sets out again to meet and make his destiny. ' Though much is taken much abides, and though we are not 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.'
This kind of determination not only spoke to the Victorian world, and to Tennyson's own life- situation with its great losses and difficulties, but I believe will speak to mankind for so long as we are human.
Book Review: A superb collection!
Summary: 5 Stars
By the way, this Penguin book has the COMPLETE text of "In Memoriam." The Everyman's edition does not.