In the fourth stanza Ulysses addresses to his mariners. They are in front of the port, Tennyson in this part uses a lots of deictics: for example “there lies the port” or “there gloom the dark broad seas”. Mariners are loyal men: “souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me”. Ulysses and his friend are old and they faced to great sufferings “the thunder and the sunshine, and opposed free hearts, free foreheads”. There is the contraposition between head and heart. The contrast between the infinite greatness of Ulysses’ soul and his finite human status is visible through contrasts in the text: for example “he works his work, I mine”, “his honour and his toil”. Tennyson shows Ulysses’ desire to live and to know. The stanza took place during a calm evening where the light is reflected by the rocks.
The last stanza is characterised by the contrast between the mariners’ age and the strength of their souls. Ulysses and his mariners are the same people, Tennyson uses the pronoun WE to identify them. They are old but characterised by of “one equal temper of heroic hearts, make weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”.