In Canto XXVI of the Inferno, Ulysses describes his final voyage, and explains why he’s burning in hell: Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence For my old father, nor the due affection Which joyous should have made Penelope, Could overcome within me the desire I had to be experienced of the world, And of the vice and virtue of mankind; Or Tennyson’s aged Ulysses: Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Both poems seem to be describing an Ithican mid-life crisis.