 The contemporary reviews of " Ulysses " were positive and found no irony in the poem . Author John Sterling — like Tennyson a member of the Cambridge Apostles — wrote in the Quarterly Review in 1842 , " How superior is ' Ulysses ' ! There is in this work a delightful epic tone , and a clear impassioned wisdom quietly carving its sage words and graceful figures on pale but lasting marble . " Tennyson 's 1842 volume of poetry impressed Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle . Quoting three lines of " Ulysses " in an 1842 letter to Tennyson — 
