Tennyson. To yield or not to yield

Tennyson says famously: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield"

And of course its true.

And how should it be interpreted?
I would think it applied to not yielding to discouragement, fear, temptation, to time, despair, disappointment, old age and more.

But not yield? To be unyielding? To be firm? That I cannot see as a positive attribute. Of course man must yield to chances, to opportunities. To life itself!

When seen against earlier lines in this very same poem it poses a contradiction.

"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 then yet again later Tennyson says 'Come, my friends, "Tis not too late to seek a newer world."

Therein is the contradiction in my opinion. How can one move forward, make new discoveries, indeed shine and be burnished if one did not dare to yield? The being able to yield, to be able to put aside ones thoughts, fears, 'shoulds' and 'should nots' and melt into the moment, become the moment, go with the impulse- that is the real challenge. Only then is movement and true change possible, true transformation and true participation. Only then can one say

"I am a part of all that I have met"