Ulysses

In class yesterday, we studied Tennyson's Ulysses, my favourite excerpt from which I shall quote here (I especially like the first four lines here):

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and 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.

There is so much in this section (and even more in the rest of the poem) and it is expressed so beautifully and fittingly but I have been thinking of the truth, yet the sadness of these sentiments (especially those in the middle of this section).

Ulysses is, in this poem, an old man who is contemplating one last adventure. He laments the fact that we have a limited time on this earth yet unlimited possibilities of action: "Life piled on life/ Were all too little" yet, as a Christian (although, being human, I can certainly relate in part) since I have a hope of eternity (and not one of "silence") this should not be a problem. We are pilgrims on this earth and although we are to be concerned with the matters of this life, our treasures and goal should be on things above so that when we reach the age where these lamentations are appropriate, we rather yearn for that better place than lament that we cannot spend more time here.

I have many other thoughts on many other aspects of the passage but I think that I shall leave it at that and let my dear readers discern what they will from it.