<P> Other ironic readings have found Ulysses longing for withdrawal, even death, in the form of his proposed quest . In noting the sense of passivity 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 inwardly . To Ulysses, experience is "somewhere out there", </P> <P>... an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move . (19--21) </P> <P> 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--</P> <P> It may be that the gulfs will wash us down, It may be we shall touch the happy Isles And see the great Achilles whom we knew! (sic) (62--64) </P>

Write a note on tennyson's attitude to life and death with reference to ulysses