 Other ironic readings have found Ulysses longing for withdrawal , even death , in the form of his proposed quest . In noting the sense of <unk> in the poem , critics highlight Tennyson 's tendency toward the melancholic . T. S. Eliot opines that " Tennyson could not tell a story at all " . He finds Dante 's treatment of Ulysses exciting , while Tennyson 's piece is " an elegiac mood " . " Ulysses " is found lacking in narrative action ; the hero 's goal is vague , and by the poem 's famous last line , it is not clear for what he is " striving " , or to what he refuses to yield . According to Victorian scholar Herbert Tucker , Tennyson 's characters " move " through time and space to be moved <unk> . To Ulysses , experience is " somewhere out there " , 
