“Generations have trod, trod, trod”
Here, the use of the heavy ‘d’ sounds could, again, reflect the mighty power of God.
“And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;”
A caesura is utilised in these next lines, with the use of the semi-colon dividing short, abrupt sounding phrases, slowing the pace of the lines. Here, Hopkins is criticising the capitalist world of humans, and he states that nature’s beauty is marred by trade and toil. I think he uses this caesura to emphasise the destructive nature of human civilisation on God’s Earth, and the way in that this has slowed the development of nature, in the same way that the caesura slows the poem here. Jesus Christ, preached values which were decidedly anti-capitalist, and so do many latter day Christians, evidently including Hopkins.
Next, he exalts nature’s resilience, where he states that ‘nature is never spent;’. Here he is saying that despite human efforts to perturb it, nature is still pure and fresh deep inside the Earth, and that God’s ‘charge’ is still present here, away from the destructive civilisations.
Ulysses, however, is not religion specific, and more philosophical in its tone. The Ulyssean philosophy of a passion for later (older) life is propagated in Tennyson’s poem. The poem’s subject matter is mainly life, death and mortality, very much a philosophical subject matter.
“Death closes all;”
This is a very striking and conclusive statement to make, these words mean that there is no afterlife, no heaven/hell, and evidently, no God. However this seems to be revoked by Tennyson later in the poem when he writes of ‘seeking a newer world’, and the ‘happy isles’ which seems like reference to a heavenly place of sorts.
This final sailing journey mentioned can be interpreted either as a literal journey at sea, going for as long as the sailor can survive, or as a metaphorical journey to heaven, or the ‘happy isles’.
To avoid contradiction with the quote ‘Death closes all;’ it could be interpreted that the Greeks in the period of Ulysses would have believed in mythological places that were physically existent, and therefore could be reached prior to death.
The poem is written as a dramatic monologue, thus it is in a format to be performed by a single character. An element of philosophy deals with the notion of selflessness, or the lack of it in the case of Ulysses. Through the style of writing employed we can see the egotistical character of the King coming through. He devotes a full 26 lines to his own egotistical proclamation of his zeal for the wandering life, and another 26 lines to the exhortation of his mariners to roam the seas with him. However, he offers only 11 lines of lukewarm praise to his son concerning the governance of the kingdom in his absence, and a mere two words about his "aged wife" Penelope.