Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Quick answer: Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson analysed: the aging hero's restless speech, the dramatic monologue's blank verse craft, and why its final line endures.
An old king stands on a rocky shore, bored to fury by his own throne. Tennyson's Ulysses, written in 1833 and published in 1842, picks up Homer's hero years after the Odyssey ends: home in Ithaca, married to an aged wife, governing a people he privately dismisses, and unable to bear the stillness. The whole poem is his speech talking himself, and a crew of old shipmates, into one last voyage.
Tennyson wrote it in the weeks after learning that his closest friend, Arthur Hallam, had died at twenty-two. He said the poem expressed his own need to keep going forward and brave the struggle of life. That grief under the heroics is what keeps the poem from being a simple pep talk.
What the poem says
The opening movement is complaint: it little profits an idle king to mete and dole laws to a savage race that hoards and sleeps and does not know him. Ulysses then remembers who he was, a name that roamed with a hungry heart, honoured across windy Troy, and declares himself part of all that he has met. Experience, he says, is an arch through which the untravelled world forever gleams and recedes.
The middle movement hands Ithaca to his son. Telemachus is praised, blameless, prudent, decent, in lines so measured they sound faintly like a sigh; he will do the slow work of civilising, and the poem's most quietly devastating half-line follows: he works his work, I mine. The final movement turns to the harbour, the dark broad seas, and the old mariners. Death closes all, Ulysses grants, but something before the end may yet be done, and the speech rises to its famous close: to strive, to seek, to find, and never to yield.
How it works
Ulysses is a dramatic monologue in blank verse, and Tennyson's metrical control is the lesson. When the old man's will surges, the iambs march; when age drags at him, the meter slows into long monosyllables, most famously in the late line about the deep moaning round with many voices. Critics have noticed that lines like the one where the slow moon climbs take almost as long to say as the moon takes to climb.
The monologue form also builds in irony. Everything we hear is self-presentation. Is this heroism, or an old man's vanity abandoning his responsibilities and calling it destiny? The poem supports both readings, and the tension between them is deliberate.
Why it lasts
The closing line may be the most quoted piece of Victorian verse in existence, carved on memorials and borrowed by explorers, politicians, and at least one Bond film. But the poem lasts for a deeper reason: it gives permanent voice to the refusal to be finished. Written by a young man in grief, spoken by an old man in port, it fits anyone who has outlived a version of themselves.
What today's poet can steal
Steal the dramatic monologue with an agenda: give a familiar character a speech in which what they want colours every claim they make, and let readers sense the spin. Steal the metrical pacing too, slowing your rhythm with monosyllables exactly where the body tires. Writory judges score structure and emotion separately, and this poem is a masterclass in making the two inseparable.
What poets can take from this
- Pick a mythical or historical figure and write the speech they give after their story officially ends.
- Let your speaker praise someone in terms that quietly reveal condescension.
- Slow key lines with long vowels and monosyllables; speed others with light stresses.
- Keep the audience inside the poem, shipmates, a son, a court, so the speech has stakes.
- End on infinitives or verbs of motion when the poem's engine is will.
Try it yourself
Write a blank-verse monologue for a retired figure, an athlete, a monarch, a soldier, a parent whose children have left, persuading old companions to attempt one final act, letting readers decide whether it is courage or escape.
Questions
What is the theme of Ulysses by Tennyson?
The poem dramatises the refusal to surrender to age and idleness. Ulysses insists that life must mean striving until the end, though readers can also hear restlessness, pride, and flight from duty in his speech.
What form is Ulysses written in?
It is a dramatic monologue in blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameter, spoken by Ulysses to himself and then to his old mariners as he prepares a final voyage.
Why did Tennyson write Ulysses?
He wrote it shortly after the sudden death of his close friend Arthur Hallam in 1833, saying it expressed his feeling that life must still be fought forward. The heroic speech is grief converted into resolve.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.