Ulysses

“Ulysses” is a blank-verse poem by English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, written in 1833 and published in the two-volume collection Poems (1842). In a stirring dramatic monologue, the aged title character outlines his plans to abandon his dreary kingdom of Ithaca to reclaim lost glory in a final adventure on the seas. It was one of several poems that Tennyson composed in response to the death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam.

Restless and bored with Ithaca, Ulysses turns his throne over to his prudent son Telemachus and rallies his men with inspiring words of heroism. The ironic distance of the narrative voice intensifies the ambiguity as to whether Ulysses is proving his noble courage or shirking his responsibilities in Ithaca for a journey that may prove to be futile, fatal, or both. Tennyson based his two-sided view of Ulysses on Book XI of Homer’s ancient Greek epic the Odyssey and Canto XXVI of Dante’s 14th-century long narrative poem the Inferno. He also drew from the Odyssey in his poem “The Lotos-Eaters.”