Tennyson verse chosen to inspire Olympic athletes
The last line of the former poet laureate’s poem Ulysses embodies Olympic values, the judges agree
Stephen Bates
guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 March 2011 19.45 GMT
Which verse could inspire athletes sprinting from their lodgings at next year’s Olympic Games in London, or trudging back after their events? After the public was asked to give suggestions, a panel of judges alighted on the last line of Tennyson’s Ulysses: “To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.”
The line was chosen by a panel including Carol Ann Duffy, the poet laureate, after suggestions were put forward on the Winning Words website. It will be inscribed along a wall at the entrance to the athletes’ village, and will remain there after the buildings are converted to housing following the Games.
Members of the public were invited to suggest appropriately inspiring verse for the site, incorporating the values of the Olympics, such as fair play, excellence, friendship, courage and determination, and 360 replies were received for the judges to review.
Runners-up – perhaps silver and bronze medallists would be more appropriate – will also have their verse inscribed around the site.
They include Robert Browning’s “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp/ Or what’s a heaven for?”; Langston Hughes’s “First in the heart is the dream/ Then the mind starts seeking a way”; Denise Levertov’s “And what I heard was my whole self/ Saying and singing what it knew: I can”; and “To change the world by mastering a game” by Sean O’Brien – the only living poet on the shortlist.
Explaining the choice of Tennyson, the sports presenter Clare Balding, another of the judges, said: "The aim was to find a line of poetry that somehow encapsulated the endeavour, the glory and the dance with failure that Olympic sport entails.
“To have discovered that in a great British poem by a poet laureate about a figure from Greek classical mythology is so perfectly appropriate as to be almost poetic.”
Her fellow panellist Daljit Nagra said he liked the line because “it is a clarion call to the best parts of our searching, inquiring selves, which is just as suited to a gold-medal winner as it is to an ordinary worker in their daily round.”
Perhaps it’s just as well that the panel did not choose another famous Tennyson line: “Half a league, half a league, half a league onward.” Or even another, from earlier in Ulysses: “'Tis not too late to seek a newer world/ Push off …”