Poem: Ulysses

Overview
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s "Ulysses" is a dramatic monologue spoken by the aging hero of Homeric and Roman legend, now king of Ithaca after the Trojan War. Restless and dissatisfied with the settled life of governance, Ulysses longs to return to the sea and pursue further knowledge and experience. The poem unfolds as a meditation on aging, purpose, and the tension between heroic striving and domestic duty, rendered in flexible blank verse that mirrors the speaker’s roving mind.

Voice and Situation
Ulysses speaks from his throne yet feels exiled within his own realm. The routines of rule, the expectations of a “civil” life, and the perceived dullness of his subjects weigh on him. He contrasts the rich intensity of his past wanderings with the static nature of kingship, insisting that existence should be measured by experience, not by comfort or mere survival. For him, life is diminished when it is not pushed to its edge; staying home is a kind of rust, while voyaging polishes the spirit. He values the camaraderie of his mariners, the shock of new sights, and the ever-receding horizon of knowledge, which beckons even as the body weakens with age.

The Three Movements
The monologue begins with a confession of discontent. Ulysses catalogs the vitality of his former adventures, storms weathered, councils held with kings, cities and strangers encountered, and asserts that each encounter has enlarged him. He refuses to let the remainder of his days be consumed by ceremony or inertia, declaring that to breathe without striving is an affront to his nature.

The poem then pivots to Telemachus, Ulysses’s son, whom he acknowledges as prudent, conscientious, and well-suited to the steady work of ruling Ithaca. Ulysses’s tribute is sincere but also clarifies the difference between father and son: Telemachus will civilize and administer, while Ulysses’s heart belongs to exploration. By naming Telemachus regent in spirit, Ulysses gives himself permission to imagine departure.

Finally, Ulysses turns to address his old shipmates, summoning them to one last voyage. He concedes their age and diminished strength yet insists their will remains undaunted. The proposed journey aims beyond familiar bounds, toward the western seas, past the pillars that marked the classical edge of the world. The destination is deliberately ambiguous: it may be a literal new shore, the realm of the dead where he might meet Achilles, or simply the far country of mortality itself. The call urges action despite uncertainty, valuing the attempt over guaranteed arrival.

Themes and Tone
The poem balances heroic aspiration with elegiac awareness. Aging is neither denied nor lamented; it is acknowledged as a spur to intensify purpose. Duty is honored but reframed: the civic sphere belongs to Telemachus, while Ulysses asserts a different duty, to questing, to the enlargement of the soul through encounter. The tone mingles defiance and tenderness, nostalgia and resolve, and the language shifts from reflective to exhortatory, carrying the reader from private dissatisfaction to public rallying cry.

Closing Vision
"Ulysses" ends with a vow to keep pressing on, however dark the tide or late the hour. The image of the mariners launching into a deepening twilight encapsulates both mortality and hope. What endures is not youth or strength but the chosen stance toward the unknown: a steadfast will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.