And Not To Yield

      Last night's final episode of Frasier was a class act, and I hope that those of you that didn't see it but did watch the infernally idiotic send-off for Friends eventually get off your comic duffs and realize what adult comedy is about. Someone emailed me today asking about the poem that Frasier quoted at the end of the episode. Well, Frasier doesn't quote from the entire poem, but from the last nine lines of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Ulysses (1833, published in 1842), and the lines he recited are these:

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.

The full text of the poem can be found here. And, no, I didn't need Google to identify the poem.

      Frasier went out as well as can be expected (given the series closers almost inevitably disappoint). Its final moments were genuinely moving-- and not in the least syrupy. Other series nearing their ends: keep this show in mind, please. It was a graceful exit, something more shows really need to learn how to do. That it ended with a kind of happy Prosperan wistfulness was appropriate: there was hope, but not certainty; a future left in ellipsis, but not hyperbolized. Well done.