Can someone please provide me with line-to-line explanation of the poem ULYSSES and GOD's GRANDEUR?

Question

ULYSSES by Alfred Lord Tennyson and GOD'S GRANDEUR by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

I also want a line-to-line explanation of the poem ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH by Wilfred Owen.

Ps: It would be good if u give the meaning of each and everyline in chronological order.

Answer 1

Now aren't you sweet to make a demand of three poems, line to line explanation just from a single question of yahoo ? Even of a single poem it is too much. You may ask a prticular line from a poem the meaning that you have failed to appreciate. but this you may ask us next to write an anthology on the English Poetry from Chaucer to moderns !

I shall try and give you answer for the first poem Ulysses by Lord Tennyson :

We still look to the earlier masters for supreme excellence in particular directions: to Wordsworth for sublime philosophy, to Coleridge for ethereal magic, to Byron for passion, to Shelley for lyric intensity, to Keats for richness. Tennyson does not excel each of these in his own special field, but he is often nearer to the particular man in his particular mastery than anyone else can be said to be, and he has in addition his own special field of supremacy. What this is cannot be easily defined; it consists, perhaps, in the beauty of the atmosphere which Tennyson contrives to cast around his work, molding it in the blue mystery of twilight, in the opaline haze of sunset: this atmosphere, suffused over his poetry with inestimable skill and with a tact rarely at fault, produces an almost unfailing illusion or mirage of loveliness.    -- Edmond Gosse,

You kindly make an effort in these lines to understand Tennyson :

"Ulysses"

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink

Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed

Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known - cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honoured of them all -

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades

Forever and forever 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 mysell,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle -

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and through soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads - you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.

Death closes all; but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;

The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep

Moans round with many voices. 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.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now 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.

The last line is a motto and quote for you ! Make effort and you will succeed :  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I knew the poem was long, but not this much long ! Even my initial commitment of explaining line by line this poem is also I find too tedious, exacting and laborious to the extreme !

If you have any particular passage to understand , you may send me an Email.

the story of Ulysses is picked from Odyssey of Homer.

Read carefully four to five times the poem. Iam sure the meaning will reveal itself. Tenny