Compare and contrast the poems “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley and “Ulysses” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. What are these poems’ views of life achievements? What similarities exist between Ulysses and Ozymandias? How do their attitudes differ in regards to their eventual goals? How do these similarities and differences contribute to the overall tones and interpretations of the poems?

Percy Shelley's “Ozymandias” was written about the statue of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, a real historical person. Tennyson's “Ulysses” is about a Greek mythological hero, more commonly known in modern schools as Odysseus, from Homer's epic The Odyssey.
The similarities between the two poems lie in their treatment of power and fame as fleeting. Although Ozymandias wanted to ensure his immortality by building a great statue, Shelley's poem shows us this is ultimately impossible—this is what the statue looks like now, according to the poem's speaker:

Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in the desert. . . Near them, on the sand, 
Half sunk a shattered visage lies

With time, everything fades, even powerful rulers and their impressive memorials. Ulysses feels the same kind of thing is happening to him while he still lives. He has been a great adventurer, and warrior, and although he is now the king of Ithaca, he already sees the end coming.
Ulysses expresses this idea in this way:

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains

Ulysses is still living, but he doesn't feel very alive. He feels almost like Ozymandias's statue; he is crumbling, he has lost his sense of grandeur.
Ozymandias and Ulysses are different in terms of their desire to rule. Ozymandias loves the power that comes from governing a kingdom. We see this in the words he had transcribed at the base of his statue:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! 

Ulysses, however, doesn't want to rule anymore. He wants to return to the life he led as a younger man:

Death closes all: but something ere the end, 
Some work of noble note, may yet be done, 
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. 

He knows he is getting closer to death, and he wants one more shot at what he considers glory: striving with the Gods.
The tone of the two poems differs because of the self-awareness, or lack thereof, of the poems' human subjects. Ozymandias makes a bold but ultimately foolish declaration. He seems oblivious to the transitory nature of life and power. He is not a sympathetically tragic character because he does not perceive his own weakness and his own eventual destruction.
Ulysses, on the other hand, is driven by a self-awareness of his desire to live fully while he still can, although he knows it will be brief and will probably end tragically. He says,

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink 
Life to the lees.

This means Ulysses will live life to its fullest. The lees are the sediments at the bottom of a wine barrel. Although this sediment is not particularly good, Ulysses means he will experience all of life, the good and the bad.
The reader empathizes with Ulysses's desire to avoid a quiet resignation about finishing out his days doing something he doesn't want to do.