Ulysses

“Ulysses” is written in blank verse. That means the poem doesn’t rhyme and the overall meter is iambic pentamer, meaning there are five iambs per line (an iamb is a two-syllable foot where an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable). Moreover, “Ulysses” ends with a pristine line of iambic pentameter: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” (Line 70, bolding indicates the stressed syllables).

Blank verse is an appropriate form for a dramatic monologue because a dramatic monologue is spoken out loud, and iambic pentameter is associated with speech. As Aristotle observes in his “Poetics”: “[T]he iambic is, of all measures, the most colloquial we see it in the fact that conversational speech runs into iambic lines more frequently than into any other kind of verse” (Aristotle. “Poetics.” The MIT Internet Classics Archive). Additionally, many of the most famous speeches from Shakespeare’s plays, including all of Hamlet’s soliloquies, are written in blank verse.

Blank verse is also a form linked with the epic tradition. While