the thing about reading tennyson - is that - you don't - i don't think - you want to give up - but you see - feel - how much - how easy - desirable - it would be - to give up - if you could.

i was reading what he had said about ulysses:

“The poem was written soon after Hallam’s death, and it gives the feeling about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply than anything in In Memoriam.

and it's true there is always a sense of - struggling on - "to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield" and yet - tennyson speaks to me because - it isn't that you are seduced into giving up - you know you will go on - you know you will - but at the same time you feel - the utter weariness of - having to go on, having to be brave - and how - even if we choose the pain with the trying - you cannot help but wish - you could - choose oblivion - to have rest - "there is confusion worse than death" "give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease" that dreamful ease - anodyne from pain.