My personal understanding of the poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson is quite personal as I, too as a person quite emotional like the central fact of his poems. What really touched upon my heart about Tennyson poems is his depth of comprehension of the account of happiness that lies in the common aspects of our life. He has invariably given importance to death and made an endeavor to register a permanent thought in his readers mind that death is an inevitable part of our life and thus, it is pointless to waste our valuable time by seeking only materialistic pleasure. In the poem ‘Ulysses’ he portrayed the fact that knowledge is the most desirable aspect of one’s life through the longing of the king Odysseus. As time and age gradually helped the king realize that so long everything that he has achieved in life by winning battles do not actually matters in life. He rather, expressed his thirst for insight, in later in his life that the poet has depicted in his poem.
Throughout the poem the king furnished his desire to grasp knowledge from the life style of the communities where he fought his battles. With time he came to understand the true magnitude of life that lies solely in acquiring knowledge from everything and everyone. He, thus, ask his fellowman also to contribute their life beyond the limitation of normal people. He entreated them to voyage distant shores outside his own country. While encouraging his fellow boatmen he has also admitted the fact that like him they have also become old. However, he never let his physically weakness, that came as a normal process of life, overpowers his zeal to explore life beyond average. His longing for insight and wisdom have been given utmost color in the poem by describing or comparing them with sinking star, Sail beyond sunset, the baths of all western stars etc.
It was indeed a sheer pleasure to read all the three poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses, The Splendour Falls and Tears, Idle Tears. One thing that revolves the common subject of all the three poems is the fact of blissful imagination power of the writer. Almost in all the three poems the poet delineated the beauty of life through the reality and realization of death or loss of all materialistic pleasure of life. The poems are so touchy that after each read it would take its reader to different world where aesthetic beauty of literature is given more importance than anything else. a
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