This Idle King
Are the Old 97's about to get sued by Alfred Lord Tennyson?
Hello. You’ve reached Time & Temperature.
Songs emerge and evolve. In my experience with my own songs, their genesis and development mystify me as much as they might any listener. Where do they come from? I don't know. What do they mean? Ditto.
I have theories, though I tend to believe that my theories about my own songs’ meaning don’t carry any more weight than might those of a family member or dedicated fan. It’s true that we songwriters make choices in the name of pushing the song towards a state wherein it feels worthy of sharing with the world, and that some of these choices are obvious, sensible, repeatable songcraft — explicable if the person to whom you are trying to explain them cares to listen — but a lot of it is just… magic.
In the case of the song “Western Stars” from the newest 97’s album American Primitive, I remember writing the first draft of the song in my basement office during the lockdown, and thinking it must be the weirdest song I’d ever written. I based it off of the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem “Ulysses” that a high school English teacher had once forced me to memorize. I was clearly identifying, during that moment of forced isolation, with the poem’s narrator, Tennyson’s “idle king.” I was the frustrated Ulysses.
When I played the demo (attached below) for my mom, she told me that she wanted me to pitch it to Willie Nelson. It seemed like a long shot, but I got it to his producer only to find that I had just missed the tracking for the album he was recording at the time. “Western Stars” wound up being one of my favorite songs on the new 97’s album. And I stole large chunks of it from the great Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Ulysses
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
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 forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' 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 gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
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.
