Touch the happy isles

It’s certainly a cliché, but the death of Ted Kennedy really does mark the end of an era. The last of his generation of Kennedys dedicated to the concept of public service.

I wasn’t a particularly huge fan, but it’s clear that he was a driving force in the Senate for at least 35 years. (He held back for the first few years in office.) & he won the respect of colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

Can’t say that of too many incumbents these days. In any legislature.

News reports are citing Kennedy’s concession to Carter at the 1980 Democratic Convention as his greatest speech. In it he quoted some lines from Tennyson that he said were close to both his brothers & himself:

"I am a part of all that I have met....
Tho much is taken, much abides....
That which we are, we are—
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

That’s a cobbled-together mashup of “Ulysses”, one of my own favorite poems from the romantic period. It’s interesting that Kennedy was then 48 when he cited it; & that his brothers were both in their forties when they were murdered, & had already latched onto the poem.

The reason I find it interesting is that “Ulysses” is the musing of the hero of the Trojan war—as an aged man all too aware of his growing feebleness. The king of Ithaca is looking back at his long life & ahead at a future that can’t possibly live up to the past. It’s an old man’s tale, not a young one’s.

What is certainly applicable to Kennedy (& perhaps to his brothers, too) is Ulysses’ resolution to not go gentle into that good night, even at his age & condition. “I will live life to the lees,” he vows.

“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 grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.”

I rather think of Ted Kennedy, working phones from his sickbed to garner support for his lifelong cause of healthcare for all Americans, as scorning to rust unburnished. There was a grey spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge if ever there was one.

Ulysses talks of the responsibility of statesmanship, of the decades of governing his people & the legacy he’s leaving to his son, Telemachus.

& the final section is him planning another voyage—gathering the lads from his old unit, outfitting a ship & setting sail into the unknown. Here are the complete last lines:

“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.”

& that’s a picture of Ted Kennedy-made weak by time & disease, but strong in will—& never yielding.