Write a critical application of the poem ulssyes
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Tennyson’s Ulysses is a grand monologue, where the old warrior, who embodies the spirit of heroic adventure in the primitive world, and whose manhood has been spent in twenty years war and travel, breaks away from the monotonous in activity of life on a small island, and fares forth again as a sea-rover.
Through his master piece Ulysses, Tennyson has given his contribution to the ideals of human race. As a critic has rightly suggested, the poem is the voice of a man in his hour of spiritual revival; it is the voice of an age, the voice of all adventure and exploration, whether in the region of Truth of Spirit, or of the visible world. It is the voice of the nineteenth century which was the age of discovery and invention, as also of restless expansion. Ulysses is equally the voice of Greek humanism as of the European Renaissance; it is the watch word of all these who are dedicated to the attainment of an unattainable end. It is also a war-cry against pessimism and defeatism, social apathy, and complacence. It provides “an immortal slogan for Divine Discontent, the Quest Everlasting, and the call of the Beyond”.
The poem gives us a glimpse of Tennyson’s political philosophy as well as of his attitude towards old age. That he favoured gradual political reform, and not radical and revolutionary change, is clear from the phrase “slow prudence to make mind a rugged people”. He has a very high conception of the possibilities of old age:
“Old 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.”