The Senior Journey Begins . . .

We launch off on your senior voyage with Tennyson's incredibly beautiful poem "Ulysses"--which is the Roman name for the Greek king "Odysseus"(whom you read about your freshmen year in The Odyssey!)

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

"I am a part of all I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

Old King Ulysses is explaining to his son Telemachus why he is itching to go out on yet another adventure. The King is also trying to persuade his beat-up, aging crew to join him for one last voyage.

"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 western stars, until I die."

With great intensity, Ulysses pleads with them to recall their past glories, but warns that their voyage could end in disaster. He concludes with stirring language that has been quoted by football coaches, doctors and politicians for decades. Earlier in the poem Ulysses says he wants to "seek knowledge like a sinking star." In the end, he valiantly urges his warriors to join him in his quest "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."