"Ulysses" by Alfred Lord Tennyson

(1) Tennyson's poem is basically saying that you only live once and that you need need to seize the day and make the most of it. I think that he is saying to live life because even though the poem is about a man who has done great things and getting elderly, he still wants to do more. No one should stop living until they are dead.

(2) "It little profits that an idle king, 

      By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
      Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole     

      Unequal laws unto a savage race,

      That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me". 

     I think that Tennyson is trying to say that its unfair that he should have to stay at home with his old and barren wife, doling out punishments and rewards to the people of his kingdom when they really do not know him.