Ulysses is a dramatic monologue written by lord Alfred Tennyson. The dramatic persona is Ulysses, the legendary hero of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey, who is an old man , having returned to Ithaca after twenty years absence and much adventure, now he is thinking about his life. The protagonist of the monologue is revealed by his own words .He isn’t happy to see the condition of his country and he isn’t attractive by his wife. He has fought in the war of Troy, he has met dangerous and adventure of all sorts and he became famous in all over the world, but now even if he is old , he wants to set sail for the extreme adventures “ before death closes all”. The poem is divided into three paragraph: in the first there is the introduction of Ulysses ; then in the second part the protagonist shows his own son, Telemachus, which represents the typical man of the Victorian age (slow prudence, centred in the sphere of common duties, in offices of tenderness…) ; in third part Ulysses introduces his mariners, which are like “souls” with “free hearts and free foreheads”. In this passage the reader can notice that this Ulysses seem to have some aspects in common with the Dante’s Ulysses. The hero that induced his companions to leave Ithaca and their families “ per seguir virtute e canoscienza”. And also Tennyson resumes some Dante’s line in which the protagonist wants to follow knowledge to challenge death and unknown. In the end of the monologue the melancholy Ulysses’ tone gives a different level of reading, Ulysses becomes a metaphor for the human existence. The melancholy awareness of the destiny of decline and death reserve for all the men. Tennyson uses a lot of metaphors and similes , like “ Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades” or “Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things”, that besides giving a sense of melancholy of the monologue, emphasizes a modern vision of the life concentrates more about the being that about the appearance and the materiality. There also a lot of alliteration like: “life to the less” or “ I am become a name” that put in evidence the primary values of Ulysses, so the being.