Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson: poem analysis & meaning

Ulysses the full poem, lines numbered

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

5That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d

Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

10Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

15Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’

20Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life

25Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

30And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—

35Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

40Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:

45There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

50Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

55The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and, sitting well in order, smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

60To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

65Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

70To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The poem in 60 seconds

Ulysses, the Greek hero Homer calls Odysseus, made it home from Troy. Now he is old, and home is killing him with boredom. In 70 lines of blank verse he explains why he cannot sit still, hands his island to his son, and urges his old sailors out to sea before death comes. Its last line has become a familiar motto, but read the whole speech closely: some readers think this hero is also walking out on everyone who needs him.

Ulysses, now an old king, says there is little point in sitting idle by his hearth among barren rocks, with an aged wife, handing out laws to a people who do not know him. He cannot rest from travel. He has lived fully, suffered and rejoiced, seen many cities and fought at Troy, and he feels he is part of everything he has met. Yet experience is like an arch through which an untraveled world gleams, always fading ahead of him. It is dull to stop and rust instead of shining in use. Little of his life remains, so he wants every hour for new things and to follow knowledge beyond the limits of human thought. He then presents his son Telemachus, a careful, dutiful man who will govern the island well. Finally he turns to his mariners at the port. They are all old, but some noble work may still be done before death. He calls them to push off, sail beyond the sunset until he dies, and never yield.

Speaker & situation

SpeakerUlysses, the Latin name for Odysseus, the Greek hero of Homer’s Odyssey. Years after the Trojan War he is back on his island as an old king.

ListenerIt shifts. Lines 1–32 sound like Ulysses thinking aloud. Line 33, “This is my son,” seems to present Telemachus to someone, perhaps the people or the reader. From line 45 he speaks directly to his mariners.

OccasionUlysses is about to leave on a last voyage. Tennyson wrote the poem soon after the sudden death of his close friend Arthur Hallam in 1833, and later said it gave his feeling about the need to go forward and brave the struggle of life. It was published in his Poems of 1842.

SettingUlysses’s island kingdom, Ithaca in Homer, though the poem never names it: a “still hearth” among “barren crags” (line 2), then a port at dusk, with a ship ready and the “dark broad seas” beyond (lines 44–45).

ToneRestless and scornful at the start, proud as he recalls his past, cool and measured about his son, then stirring and resolute as he calls his crew.

Ulysses

Speaker

The aging hero of the Trojan War, now king of a small island. He is proud, restless and eloquent, and he feels trapped by ordinary life.

Telemachus

His son and heir

Praised as patient, dutiful and “blameless” (line 39). He will stay behind and govern the island.

The mariners

His old crew

Aging sailors who shared his labors (line 46) and whom he calls “my friends” (line 56). He asks them to sail with him one last time.

The aged wife

Queen of the island

Mentioned only once, in line 3, and never named. In Homer she is Penelope, who waited twenty years for Odysseus to come home.

Form & sound

FormDramatic monologue; a single character speaks, and the reader learns who he is, and perhaps more than he intends, from his own words.

MeterBlank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter, 70 lines. Line 55, “The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep,” is packed with heavy single-syllable words that slow it down like the ending day.

Rhyme schemeNone. The lack of rhyme lets the speech sound like real, persuasive talk.

StructureThree verse paragraphs: Ulysses on himself and his hunger for experience (lines 1–32), his son and heir (lines 33–43), and his call to the mariners (lines 44–70).

SoundMany lines run on without a stop, such as lines 19–21, so the sentences keep moving forward like the voyage. Colons and semicolons break other lines into short, weighty steps, as in lines 54–56.

Line by line what each part says and does

1

Lines 1–5

An idle king

Ulysses says there is little profit in his being an idle king by a still hearth among barren crags, matched with an aged wife, handing out unequal laws to a savage people who hoard, sleep, feed and do not know him.

How it worksThe opening is bitter. He dismisses his kingdom, his wife and his people in five lines, and the drawn-out list in line 5 makes their life sound like mere animal routine.
2

Lines 6–21

A part of all that I have met

He cannot rest from travel and means to drink life to the last drop. He has enjoyed and suffered greatly, at sea and on shore, become famous, seen cities, customs and governments, and fought at Troy. He is part of everything he has met, yet experience is an arch through which an untraveled world gleams, its edge fading whenever he moves.

How it worksThe past is a list of glories, but the arch image in lines 19–21 explains why they are not enough: each experience opens a view of more. The horizon keeps moving, so the journey can never be finished.
3

Lines 22–32

To shine in use

It is dull to stop and rust instead of shining in use, as if breathing were the same as living. Many lives would be too few, and little of his one life remains. He calls it vile to hoard himself for three more years while his gray spirit longs to follow knowledge, like a sinking star, beyond the limits of human thought.

How it worksUlysses compares himself to a tool or weapon that rusts when idle. The “sinking star” of line 31 captures his paradox: he is setting like a star, yet chasing what lies beyond the horizon.
4

Lines 33–43

Telemachus

Ulysses presents his son Telemachus, who will inherit the sceptre and the island. He praises him as careful and dutiful, able to civilize a rough people by slow degrees, faithful in small kindnesses and in honoring the household gods. “He works his work, I mine.”

How it worksReaders disagree about the tone. The praise can sound sincere, or it can sound faint, as if a hero were describing a good administrator he does not quite admire.
5

Lines 44–57

The port at dusk

The ship is at the port, its sail filling, and the dark seas wait. Ulysses addresses his mariners, who have shared his labors and met storm and sunshine gladly. They are all old, and death ends everything, but some noble work may still be done. Evening falls, and he tells his friends it is not too late to seek a newer world.

How it worksThe fading light of lines 54–56 matches the old age of the men. The invitation in line 57 turns the end of the day into a starting point.
6

Lines 58–70

Not to yield

He tells them to push off and row, because he means to sail beyond the sunset until he dies. They may drown, or they may reach the Happy Isles and see Achilles again. Much has been taken, but much remains: weakened by time and fate, they are still strong in will to strive, seek, find and not yield.

How it worksUlysses admits the risk and the loss of strength before he makes his final claim. The last line’s four verbs build to a refusal, so the poem ends on willpower rather than on a promise of success.

The turn

Lines 44

The poem has no single volta, but it moves in three stages, and the biggest turn comes at line 44. After weighing his restlessness (lines 1–32) and handing on his duties (lines 33–43), Ulysses stops explaining and starts acting: “There lies the port.” From here he speaks to his mariners and the poem becomes a call to go.

Literary devices with line numbers

Dramatic monologue

The whole poem is Ulysses’s speech, with listeners implied at line 33 (“This is my son”) and line 45 (“My mariners”). Because we hear only his side, readers must judge him by his own words, including his dismissal of his people in lines 4–5.

Metaphor

Lines 19–21 call experience “an arch wherethro’ / Gleams that untravell’d world,” whose edge fades as he moves. In line 23 an idle man is a blade that will “rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use.” Both metaphors make stopping look like decay.

Simile

In line 31 his spirit yearns “To follow knowledge, like a sinking star.” The star sinks below the horizon as it sets, so the image joins his decline with his desire to go beyond the edge of the known world.

Allusion

The poem draws on the Trojan War: “windy Troy” (line 17), men who “strove with Gods” (line 53) and “the great Achilles” (line 64). It also echoes Dante’s Inferno, Canto 26, where Ulysses urges his old companions to follow knowledge beyond the known world.

Caesura and monosyllables

Line 55, “The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep,” is broken by colons into slow, one-syllable steps. The sound slows the reader to the pace of dusk and old age.

Parallelism

Line 70 lines up four verbs: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” The last one breaks the pattern by adding “not,” so the list ends on refusal, the core of Ulysses’s will.

Themes in Ulysses

Restlessness and the hunger for experienceOld age and willDuty against desireFacing death

Restlessness and the hunger for experience

Ulysses “cannot rest from travel” (line 6). For him, life means using himself fully, and every hour is “A bringer of new things” (line 28). Breathing alone is not living (line 24).

Old age and will

Ulysses admits he is old, weakened by “time and fate” (line 69), yet insists “’Tis not too late” (line 57). The poem sets the body’s decline against a will that refuses to shrink.

Duty against desire

Telemachus is “centred in the sphere / Of common duties” (lines 39–40), while Ulysses wants to follow knowledge beyond all bounds. “He works his work, I mine” (line 43) divides the two lives, and readers disagree about which the poem values more.

Facing death

“Death closes all” (line 51), and the voyage may end in drowning (line 62). Ulysses does not deny death; he chooses how to meet it, sailing “until I die” (line 61).

Images and symbols

The sea and the newer world

The open sea stands for the unknown and for experience still to be had. The “newer world” (line 57) is not a real destination but whatever lies beyond what he has already known.

The arch of experience (lines 19–21)

Each experience is a doorway to a further view. The fading margin shows why Ulysses can never feel finished.

The sunset and the western stars (lines 60–61)

Sailing west, toward the sunset, suggests moving toward death. Ulysses turns that direction into a goal rather than an ending.

Tensions

Heroic reading vs. ironic reading. Many readers hear a stirring call never to give up. Others note that Ulysses scorns his people as a “savage race” (line 4), mentions his wife only once, and praises his son coolly, so the speech may also expose a selfish man abandoning his duties.

Youth’s strength vs. age. “We are not now that strength which in old days / Moved earth and heaven” (lines 66–67). The final lines weigh what time has taken against what still “abides” (line 65).

The ending

How Ulysses ends, explained

The final lines begin with a concession. Ulysses admits the voyage may fail: “It may be that the gulfs will wash us down” (line 62), or it may bring them to the Happy Isles, the resting place of heroes in Greek myth, where they would see Achilles, a comrade from the Trojan War. He then admits what age has done: they are not the strength that once “Moved earth and heaven.” Yet “that which we are, we are,” a plain statement that accepts the present without apology. The last line gives four verbs, “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,” and the final one shifts from action to refusal. The ending promises nothing about success. What it offers is will. Readers take it in two main ways. In the heroic reading, the lines are a rousing refusal to give up in old age or grief; Tennyson wrote the poem soon after his friend Arthur Hallam died, and later said it expressed the need to go forward and brave the struggle of life. In the ironic reading, the same resolve belongs to a man who has just handed off his kingdom and is leaving his wife and his people so he can chase glory, and who may lead his old friends to drown. The poem gives evidence for both, which is why the line works as a motto and still invites argument.

“I am a part of all that I have met;”

Line 18. Ulysses says experience has made him who he is. Everything he has seen and done is now part of him.

“How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!”

Lines 22–23. His case against retirement: an idle hero is like a blade left to rust, and only use makes it shine.

“Tho’ much is taken, much abides;”

Line 65. A balanced line that admits loss and claims strength at once, the attitude of the whole final passage.

“Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Lines 69–70. The famous close. It concedes weakness, then ends on four verbs of will, the last one a refusal.

Common misreadings

MythThe poem retells a scene from Homer’s Odyssey.

ActuallyHomer’s Ulysses (Odysseus) is the character, but the Odyssey ends with him back home. The idea of a last voyage past the edge of the known world comes mainly from Dante’s Inferno, Canto 26. In Homer, all of Odysseus’s crew die before he reaches home. The old crew comes from Dante too: his Ulysses sets out with a few companions who are, like him, old and slow.

MythUlysses is simply a hero the poem wants us to admire.

ActuallyMany readers admire his resolve, but the monologue also shows him scorning his people as a “savage race” (line 4), mentioning his wife only as “aged” (line 3), and praising his son in cool terms. Critics debate whether the poem celebrates him, questions him, or does both.

MythThe last line means Ulysses is sure he will succeed.

ActuallyJust before it, he admits “the gulfs will wash us down” is a real possibility (line 62) and that they are “Made weak by time and fate” (line 69). The last line is about refusing to give up, not about guaranteed success.

AP practice a poetry prompt in the exam's style

In Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” the aging hero of the Trojan War explains why he will leave his kingdom for one last voyage. Read the poem carefully, then write an essay that analyzes how Tennyson uses literary elements and techniques to convey a complex perspective on aging, duty and ambition.

What a strong response notices

The contemptuous description of kingdom, wife and people in lines 1–5, and what it reveals about the speaker.
The metaphors of the arch (lines 19–21) and of rusting versus shining (line 23).
The cool, measured praise of Telemachus in lines 33–43 and the division in “He works his work, I mine” (line 43).
The dusk imagery and slow monosyllables of lines 54–56, set against the call to “seek a newer world” (line 57).
The concessions in lines 62–69 and the four-verb close of line 70.

Practice prompt written by StoryBites, not taken from a College Board exam. See the AP Literature free-response guide for how answers are scored.

Test yourself

1. What does Ulysses say he is “become” in line 11?

2. What does Ulysses compare experience to in lines 19–21?

3. To whom does Ulysses leave the sceptre and the isle?

4. What time of day is it when Ulysses calls his mariners?

5. What does Ulysses hope they might find beyond the sunset?

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Answer

Explain it like I’m 12

Ulysses was a famous Greek hero who had wild adventures at sea. Now he is an old king at home, and he is bored. He feels that sitting still is like a sword rusting away. He hands his kingdom to his son, who is patient and good at ruling. Then he gathers his old sailors for one more trip. He knows they are not as strong as they used to be, and they might even die. But he says they should keep trying and never give up.

Compare & connect

The Odyssey

Homer

Homer tells how Odysseus struggles for years to get home to Ithaca. Tennyson imagines him home at last and longing to leave again.

My Last Duchess

Robert Browning

Also a dramatic monologue first published in 1842. Both speakers reveal more about themselves than they mean to, which invites the reader to judge them.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T. S. Eliot

Another dramatic monologue about aging, but Prufrock hesitates at every step, while Ulysses refuses to hesitate at all.

Discussion and essay prompts:

💬 Discussion questions

What is Ulysses by Tennyson about
What does To strive to seek to find and not to yield mean
What does I am a part of all that I have met mean
How does Ulysses explore the theme of restlessness and the hunger for experience?
How does Ulysses explore the theme of old age and will?
What is the central conflict in Ulysses, and how does it shape the ending?

✎ Essay prompts

Analyze how Alfred, Lord Tennyson develops the theme of restlessness and the hunger for experience in Ulysses. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
Examine the significance of the sea and the newer world in Ulysses. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
How does Alfred, Lord Tennyson use dramatic monologue to shape the reader’s experience of Ulysses?
Some readers assume that the poem retells a scene from Homer’s Odyssey. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.

Key questions students ask

What is Ulysses by Tennyson about
What does To strive to seek to find and not to yield mean
What does I am a part of all that I have met mean
Is Ulysses a hero or selfish in Tennyson’s poem
Who is Telemachus in Ulysses
Why did Tennyson write Ulysses

Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The poem is printed from the first edition of Tennyson’s Poems (London: Edward Moxon, 1842), volume II, checked line by line against the page images of that printing. It is in the public domain.