Looking for a Poem

[Two_and_a_Half_Inches_of_Fun]

@Sage Rat

No, I fear I’ve given as much information as I recall.

I mean, really it’s possible that it is Ulysses and my brain just made up a bunch of stuff. But if so it gave me an entirely different impression in class than it does now. It doesn’t feel to me like we’ve found it but who knows really.

When did you take the class? Could you e-mail the professor and ask him? Or maybe see if he has a website with a syllabus posted?

[HazelNutCoffee]

If “Ulysses” isn’t the poem you’re looking for, I seriously doubt it’s a respresentative work by a famous poet. My friends are all stumped, and three of them studied poetry as their specialty for their MA. I’ll let you know if anyone gets struck by inspiration.

[Sampiro]

The only three that come to mind don’t fit the OP criteria in one or more ways, but I’ll mention them anyway:
Rudyard Kipling’s IF, probably the most famous poem in which a father gives advice to a son. The father’s not a king however (to my knowledge) though he does mention them in the final stanza.

last stanza of IF

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

The second is The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s, in which the title character is (obviously) a bishop rather than a king but a very rich and powerful one, and he’s giving instructions to his (illegitimate) sons in which he mixes in excerpts from his own very corrupt life. It’s also not short, but 125 lines. Link

The real dark horse candidate is Sonatorrek, or (in English) “Lament for my Sons”, by Egill Skallagrimmson (translates as Spearpoint son of Grimskull), a Viking warrior and poet who died more than 1,000 years ago, but I mention it here as it is specifically about sons and it may have appeared in a modern English translation. And of course because I like typing Spearpoint son of Grimskull.

[Paladud]

“Odysseus to Telemachus” by Brodsky also kinda fits the description, though it is longer than Tennyson poem posted above.

My dear Telemachus,

               The Trojan War  

is over now; I don’t recall who won it.

The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave

so many dead so far from their own homeland.

But still, my homeward way has proved too long.

While we were wasting time there, old Poseidon,

it almost seems, stretched and extended space.

I don’t know where I am or what this place

can be. It would appear some filthy island,

with bushes, buildings, and great grunting pigs.

A garden choked with weeds; some queen or other.

Grass and huge stones . . . Telemachus, my son!

To a wanderer the faces of all islands

resemble one another. And the mind

trips, numbering waves; eyes, sore from sea horizons,

run; and the flesh of water stuffs the ears.

I can’t remember how the war came out;

even how old you are–I can’t remember.

Grow up, then, my Telemachus, grow strong.

Only the gods know if we’ll see each other

again. You’ve long since ceased to be that babe

before whom I reined in the plowing bullocks.

Had it not been for Palamedes’ trick

we two would still be living in one household.

But maybe he was right; away from me

you are quite safe from all Oedipal passions,

and your dreams, my Telemachus, are blameless.