Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Ulysses begins by explaining that he no longer enjoys his job: It little profits that an idle king,īy this still hearth, among these barren crags, This Ulysses speaks years after the Odyssey ends, after he has rejoined his queen, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus, and re-established himself as the ruler of his native Ithaca. Nor does it take place during the Trojan War, in which Ulysses (whom Homer calls “crafty,” polu-metis) distinguished himself for inventive tactics (or, from the Trojan point of view, for dirty tricks): he was the Greek who devised the Trojan Horse. How could a resignation sound so defiant? How could Blagojevich’s speechwriter get this famous poem so wrong? Tennyson’s poem does not take place during the Odyssey.

Tennyson’s great monologue is not a show of defiance but a speech of resignation from office, by a ruler who admits he is unfit to rule. Yet for anyone who knows the poem, Blagojevich might as well have quit on the spot. Resolute, determined, unwearied-appropriate, no? To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, Moved earth and heaven that which we are, we are We are not now that strength which in old days The governor quoted lines from the end of the poem, in which the hero of Homer’s Odyssey declares, in resonant blank verse, that he and his comrades still have strength to fight: Rod Blagojevich Quotes Tennyson.”) The governor used the same poem, he noted, that Senator Ted Kennedy cited in 1980, after losing the Democratic presidential nomination: “ Ulysses.” He concluded with a ringing quotation from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the Victorian poet laureate who also wrote “ The Charge of the Light Brigade.” (Some headlines read “ Gov. Just impeached by the Illinois House of Representatives, but not yet convicted by the state senate, “Blago” said that he would fight to remain in office, just as he fought for ordinary Americans. The governor looked to another British poet in another speech on Friday, January 9. Auden defined poetry as “memorable speech” the most memorable words from the disgraced governor were words most newspapers would never print.īlagojevich changed that in December, when he quoted Rudyard Kipling's “ If-” in a defiant press conference journalists took note-some even learned the history of that frequently quoted poem. Until a few weeks ago the story of Rod Blagojevich-the foul-mouthed, thick-haired governor of Illinois accused of (among other corrupt activities) trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat-didn’t seem to have much poetry in it: suspense, yes, and farce (How did he get elected?), but little of the dignity or verbal nuance we associate with serious poems. Rod Blagojevich defends himself after impeachment on January 9.

Ulysses by tennyson