Then there is a turning point of the monologue: Ulysses speaks to his son Telemachus, who will act as his successor, he do his work of governing the island while Ulysses will do his work of traveling the seas: “He works his work, I mine.”
The next scene regards Ulysses' departure with his crew: they are old but ready for new adventures (free hearts, free foreheads). The setting is frightening (dark broad seas, slow moon, deep moans) and the speaker is conscious of the risk, however Ulysses does not change his decision, he is hungry to explore the untraveled world.
The poem’s final line, “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,” came to serve as a motto for the poet’s Victorian contemporaries: he was a model of individual self-assertion. The figure of Ulysses held not only mythological meaning, but stood as an important contemporary cultural icon.