Alfred, Lord Tennyson · “Ulysses,” 1842

“I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.”

Source	Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses” (written 1833; published 1842)
Date	1842 — written in grief after Arthur Hallam’s death, 1833
Wording	Exact — comma after “world” per source; semicolon after “met” is Tennyson’s

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) · “Ulysses” written 1833, published in Poems, 1842

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About This Line

Tennyson wrote “Ulysses” in the grief-struck weeks after his closest friend, Arthur Hallam, died young. It gives an aging Ulysses a claim rather than a comfort: everything you’ve lived through is still in you — and the horizon keeps receding the moment you move toward it.