"Tho' much is taken, much abides..."See in text(Ulysses)
“Much is taken, much abides” is an example of diacope, a figure of speech involving the repetition of a word or phrase that is broken up by intervening words. Tennyson’s use of diacope functions as a rhetorical device because the repetition of the word “much” enables Ulysses to better persuade his mariners to join him in living their lives to the fullest despite their age.
"Free hearts, free foreheads..."See in text(Ulysses)
“Free hearts” and “free foreheads” are metonymies for desires and minds, respectively. Metonymy is a figure of speech in which a quality or attribute of something is used to represent that thing. Ulysses emphasizes here that he and his companions always welcomed danger, or “thunder,” and good fortune, or “sunshine.”
Ulysses refers to his mariners by a part of their spiritual selves: their souls. This is called synecdoche, or the representation of a whole by one of its parts. The soul is generally considered to be immortal, so Ulysses’s use of synecdoche in this context elevates his mariners—who have worked, fought, and thought alongside him—to an almost divine status.
"To follow knowledge like a sinking star,..."See in text(Ulysses)
Tennyson uses a simile when he describes Ulysses’s being holed up in pursuit of knowledge “like a sinking star.” This is the second of three times that Ulysses mentions stars in the poem. By comparing himself to a star here, he emphasizes not only how far he has fallen from his status as a hero, but also how much he hungers for adventure as well as knowledge.
"How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!..."See in text(Ulysses)
Ulysses applies to himself the simile of “rusty mail,” or rusted armor, deployed by Odysseus in Troilus and Cressida, a Shakespearean tragedy written in approximately 1602. In the play, Odysseus tells Achilles that “perseverance...Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang/ Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail/ In monumental mockery.” For Tennyson’s Ulysses, to become idle is to become dull like unused metal. However, to persevere against idleness offers hope; by sailing into “the western stars,” Ulysses may find paradise instead of the “eternal silence” of the underworld.
Tennyson employs personification when he has Ulysses describe the sea as being “vext,” or angered, by the stars in the Hyades. Personifying the sea not only creates a more vivid image of Ulysses’s memories, but also it establishes a visually stark contrast between his former and present life.
