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ROBERT Pinsky, Poet Laureate:
There's something thrilling about the idea of adventure when the
adventurer is no longer young. The courage and determination of John
Glenn recalled the figure of Dante's Ulysses, a showoff, as well as
a hero, who says, "
O brothers who have reached the west
Through a hundred thousand perils, surviving all:
So little is the vigil we see remain
Still for our senses that you should not choose
To deny it, the experience beyond the sun
Leading us onward of the world which has
No people in it. Consider well your seed:
You were not born to live as a mere brute does,
But for the pursuit of knowledge and the good.
Tennyson, following Dante, has his Ulysses say:
I am becoming a name,
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and know-- cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments…
And
Come my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek the newer world,
Push off , and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
So sail beyond the sunset; and the baths, of all the western stars
…
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 faith, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. | 
