ABSTRACT
Published 1842. Written 20 Oct.. 1833 (dated, Heath MS), soon after T. heard the news of Arthur Hallam’s death. T. made two slightly different comments. First, ‘The poem was written soon after Arthur Hallam’s death, and it gives the feeling [gave my feeling Mem. i 196] about the need of going forward and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply than anything in In Memoriam’ (Eversley). Second, comparing In Memoriam, ‘There is more about myself in Ulysses, which was written under the sense of loss and that all had gone by, but that still life must be fought out to the end. It was more written with the feeling of his loss upon me than many poems in In Memoriam’ (to James Knowles, Nineteenth Century xxxiii (1893) 182). For T.’s other attempts at this date to find solace and understanding in a classical figure, see Tithonus (p. 583), which he said was intended as a ‘pendant’ to Ulysses, and Tiresias (I 622).
