Ulysses is the dramatis personae of A. Tennyson’s dramatic monologue. The title refers to the mythological figure from Homer’s Odyssey. A. Tennyson wrote Ulysses when he had to face his friend’s death: Ulysses’ voyage represents Tennyson’s will to overcome the difficult moment.

The first five lines deal with Ulysses’ reflection on his existence: firstly he connotes himself as idle, the adjective refers to a puritan is unusual; in the following lines By this still hearth, among these barren crags create in the reader’s mind the images of oldness and of an old love, and immediately he informs the reader about his aged wife.

Ulysses’ return and seeing of his savage race seem to appeal to the biblical image of Moses’ return from mount Sinai with Ten Commandments: Israelis like the savage race hoard, and sleep, and feed.

Even if he came back the travel does not finish : I cannot rest from travel: I will drink/ Life to the lees; indeed the phrase is referring to life voyage. The voyage is made on Ulysses’ personal experiences: Much have I seen and known; cities of men /And manners, climates, councils, governments; but not only, indeed, he knows himself (Myself not least) through the others and in the others. Everyone or everything influenced your identity:  Every text is a product of intertextuality, a tissue of allusions to and citations of other texts..(David Lodge’s Nice Work) and also Ulysses says I am a part of all that I have met. Your meeting with the others and your personal experiences allow you to discover who you are and to define your identity. In the phrase untravell'd world whose margin fades, untravell’d world refers to living without experience and the experience is what makes human being “human and living”: emotions, feelings and experiences are the true essence of life and if you stop these “natural/human” events you do not see margin of your life, it does not start and finish, that is margin fades.

Ulysses is criticizing savage race’s life, indeed they only store and hoard according to puritan idea of progress and talent, but Ulysses wants to make human beings reflect on what really is life and he invites them: T is not too late to seek a newer world. Human beings have to face life, to risk even if It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: life is also made on difficulties. Life is a long voyage where you have To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.