Ulysses

Alfred, Lord Tennyson · 1842 CE · Poem · English · Victorian

An ageing king back on his rocky island finds it profitless to sit by a still hearth doling out unequal laws to a savage race, and settles the sceptre on his son so that he can call up the mariners who toiled with him. He means to drink life to the lees and follow knowledge like a sinking star beyond the utmost bound of human thought. Drafted weeks after Arthur Hallam died, and owing more to Dante's damned Ulisse than to Homer's homecoming.

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Lineage

• reworks ↑ The Divine Comedy
  Dante · c. 1320 CE · Poem
• alludes to ↑ The Odyssey
  Homer · c. 725 BCE · Poem
• ↓ Tithonus
  Alfred, Lord Tennyson · 1860 CE · Poem — companion to this

Attributes

Closest analogues

• The Seafarer
  Anonymous · c. 975 CE · Poem

  60% · 12 shared
  PoemPsychologicalDeath & MortalityExile & HomecomingWandererMeditationThe SeaThe Ship / Boatvs Selfvs Fate / GodsLyricalElegiac
• Mural
  Mahmoud Darwish · 2000 CE · Poem

  54% · 11 shared
  PoemDeath & MortalityExile & HomecomingWandererMeditationThe SeaThe Horizonvs Selfvs Fate / GodsLyricalElegiac
• Sea Grapes
  Derek Walcott · 1976 CE · Poem

  54% · 11 shared
  PoemPsychologicalExile & HomecomingWandererMeditationThe SeaThe Ship / BoatThe Horizonvs SelfLyricalElegiac
• The Star-Apple Kingdom
  Derek Walcott · 1979 CE · Poem

  54% · 11 shared
  PoemPsychologicalExile & HomecomingWandererRuler / KingMeditationThe SeaThe Ship / Boatvs SelfLyricalElegiac
• The Wanderer
  Anonymous · c. 975 CE · Poem

  54% · 11 shared
  PoemPsychologicalDeath & MortalityExile & HomecomingWandererMeditationThe Seavs Selfvs Fate / GodsLyricalElegiac
• The Lusiads
  Luís de Camões · 1572 CE · Poem

  54% · 10 shared
  PoemFame & GloryDuty & HonorExplorerRuler / KingThe SeaThe Ship / BoatThe Horizonvs Fate / GodsLyrical