In Tennyson's poem "Ulysses," the speaker, who is the great former king and warrior Ulysses, also known as Odysseus, wishes to travel. He has lived a long life, and he remembers the voyages he took in his youth, both journeying to and from battle and just general voyages he took in life. In spite of his old age, he yearns from the feeling of being in a new land, because it is invigorating and exciting to see something new that he has never experienced before.
Ulysses is aging, and he feels death coming for him. Because of this, he wishes to escape and feel he is doing something adventurous and dangerous. In this way, he feels his death, which is at this point inescapable, will not be accepted lying down. He will instead be active, as he prefers to be forced into death than to simply succumb to it.
Ulysses wants to travel; he wants to take to the high seas and embark upon exciting new adventures. Ulysses is an old man, acutely aware of his own mortality. But he's also a great king and a noble warrior. Exploration and adventure are in his blood; they are the very marrow of his being. He could just settle down for a nice, quiet life in the twilight of his years, but he simply can't do that. Nor, for that matter, does he want to.
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
Ulysses is constitutionally incapable of settling down. However old he may be, there are always new worlds to conquer, new opportunities to explore.
"Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world."
And what goes for an old warrior king, also goes for the rest of us. Irrespective of our age or physical condition, we must seek to emulate the inspiring example of Ulysses and be
"but strong in will /To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses
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