Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson is a poem written as a dramatic monologue, so the entire poem is spoken by a single character, whose identity is revealed by his own words

In the first part of Tennyson’s Ulysses the reader has understood that Ulysses wants to take a voyage even if he is old. At the same time Ulysses is aware of the little time left to him. He is old and so “little remains to live”. He is compared to a sinking star. Such image recalls the little time the star can live before dying.  He is a tragic figure who dies while sailing too far in an insatiable thirst for knowledge. According to Dante, Ulysses went beyond what was allowed by religion: the Pillars of Hercules. Dante’s Ulysses finds himself restless in Ithaca and driven by “the longing I had to gain experience of the world.” Ulysses deals with the desire to reach beyond the limits of man.

In the third stanza, he speaks of his son, Ulysses completely trusts him and entrusts him with the responsibility of handling a kingdom because he seems to embody the virtues of the perfect king and Telemachus is pictured as having all those virtues that his father lacked.

In the last section Ulysses addresses the mariners and motivates them to seek unexplored avenues, time is not in their favor as they have grown old. the voyage towards unseen lands becomes also a voyage towards the very limits of life and death, represented by the Happy Isles, a Paradise for Greek warriors. In the last line Ulysses inspires them “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” explaning that even if they are weak in bodily strength, they have a strong will, that is the real way to give sense to human life.