What is the major theme in this excerpt from "ulysses" by alfred, lord tennyson? how dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use! as though 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 grey spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought.