Alfred Lord Tennyson, one of the most renowned poets of the Victorian era, left a lasting impact on literature with his timeless works. His eloquent poetry, filled with themes of love, loss, nature, and the human condition, continues to inspire readers worldwide. Alfred Lord Tennyson quotes reflect the depth of his wisdom and understanding of life’s complexities.
Whether exploring the emotions of grief or the beauty of nature, his words resonate with anyone seeking meaning and reflection.
Alfred Lord Tennyson Quotes
1. Hope, smile from the threshold of the year to come, whispering ‘it will be happier’
2. If you don’t concentrate on what you are doing then the thing that you are doing is not what you are thinking.
3. Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt.
4. A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.
5. “My doom is, I love thee still.
Let no man dream but that I love thee still.”
6. But what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.
7. “This barren verbiage, current among men,
Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment.”
8. You may tell me that my hand and foot are only imaginary symbols of my existence. I could believe you, but you never, never can convince me that the I is not an eternal reality, and that the spiritual is not the true and real part of me.
9. Nor is it wiser to weep a true occasion lost, but trim our sails, and let old bygones be.
10. Four grey walls, and four grey towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott.
11. The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.
12. All experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move.
13. So dear a life your arms enfold, Whose crying is a cry for gold.
14. But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.
15. Forgive! How many will say, forgive, and find a sort of absolution in the sound to hate a little longer!
16. O son, thou hast not true humility, The highest virtue, mother of them all; But her thou hast not know; for what is this? Thou thoughtest of thy prowess and thy sins Thou hast not lost thyself to save thyself.
17. For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid.
18. “Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good,
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.”
19. “She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.”
20. I thought I could not breathe in that fine air That pure severity of perfect light I yearned for warmth and colour which I found In Lancelot.
21. There sinks the nebulous star we call the sun.
22. And Thought leapt out to wed with Thought Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech.
23. She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room
24. Virtue!–to be good and just– Every heart, when sifted well, Is a clot of warmer dust, Mix’d with cunning sparks of hell.
25. Some full-breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs.
26. the shell must break before the bird can fly.
27. I can’t sleep without knowing there’s hope. Half the night I waste in sighs. In a wakeful doze I sorrow. For the hands, for the lips… the eyes. For the meeting of tomorrow.
28. Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hours will last.
29. I found Him in the shining of the stars.
30. The still affection of the heart Became an outward breathing type, That into stillness past again, And left a want unknown before; Although the loss had brought us pain, That loss but made us love the more.
31. The old order changeth, yielding place to new, and god fulfills himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
32. “Sweet is true love though given in vain, in vain;
And sweet is death who puts an end to pain:
I know not which is sweeter, no, not I.
Love, art thou sweet? then bitter death must be:
Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me.
O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die.
…
I fain would follow love, if that could be;
I needs must follow death, who calls for me;
Call and I follow, I follow! let me die.”
33. Thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die.
34. Fill the cup, and fill the can: Have a rouse before the morn: Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born.
35. Not once or twice in our rough island story, The path of duty was the way to glory.
36. I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world’s altar-stairs That slope thro’ darkness up to God, I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope.
37. Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar When I put out to sea.
38. That man’s the true Conservative who lops the moldered branch away.
39. To love one maiden only, cleave to her, And worship her by years of noble deeds, Until they won her; for indeed I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thought, and aimable words And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes man.
40. It is the little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all.
41. Only reapers, reaping early In among the bearded barley, Hear a song that echoes cheerly From the river winding clearly, Down to towered Camelot.
42. Sweet is true love, though given in vain.
43. There twice a day the Severn fills; The salt sea-water passes by, And hushes half the babbling Wye, And makes a silence in the hills.
44. Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls.
45. O Love! what hours were thine and mine, In lands of palm and southern pine; In lands of palm, of orange-blossom, Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine!
46. A pasty costly-made, Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay, Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks Imbedded and injellied.
47. All precious things, discover’d late, To those that seek them issue forth, For love in sequel works with fate, And draws the veil from hidden worth.
48. Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
49. From yon blue heavens above us bent The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe’er it be, it seems to me, ‘Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.
50. Life is brief but love is LONG .
51. Ah, Christ, that it were possible, For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be.
52. Attain the unattainable.
53. There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass.
54. He that shuts love out, in turn shall be Shut out from love, and on her threshold lie, Howling in outer darkness.
55. As the husband is, the wife is.
56. The mighty hopes that make us men.
57. Men may come and men may go but I go on forever.
58. Short swallow-flights of song, that dip Their wings in tears, and skim away.
59. Once in a golden hour, I cast to earth a seed, And up there grew a flower, That others called a weed.
60. I cannot rest from travel; I will drink Life to the lees.
61. Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal; The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow speared by the shrike, And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey.
62. There’s no glory like those who save their country.
63. You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear; To-morrow’ll be the happiest time of all the glad New Year,- Of all the glad New Year, mother, the maddest, merriest day; For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be queen o’ the May.
64. That tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew.
65. “Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.”
66. O Love! they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever. Blow, bugle, blow! set the wild echoes flying! And answer, echoes, answer! dying, dying, dying.
67. Oh yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill!
68. And statesmen at her council met Who knew the seasons, when to take Occasion by the hand, and make The bounds of freedom wider yet.
69. Yonder cloud That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.
70. And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
71. The woman’s cause is man’s: they rise or sink Together.
72. The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.
73. The golden guess is morning-star to the full round of truth.
74. The greater person is one of courtesy.
75. And men, whose reason long was blind, From cells of madness unconfined, Oft lose whole years of darker mind.
76. Trust me not at all, or all in all.
77. My purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the Western stars until I die.
78. And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds.
79. The woman is so hard Upon the woman.
80. Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before, But vaster.
81. Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother’s breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.
82. In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold
83. The white flower of a blameless life.
84. Thoroughly to believe in one’s own self, so one’s self were thorough, were to do great things.
85. Bible reading is an education in itself.
86. Mastering the lawless science of our law,- that codeless myriad of precedent, that wilderness of single instances.
87. I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house, Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.
88. Willows whiten, aspens quiver, little breezes dusk and shiver, thro’ the wave that runs forever by the island in the river, flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls and four gray towers, overlook a space of flowers, and the silent isle imbowers, the Lady of Shalott.
89. Ah, why Should life all labour be?
90. A doubtful throne is ice on summer seas.
91. The woods are hush’d, their music is no more; The leaf is dead, the yearning past away; New leaf, new life–the days of frost are o’er; New life, new love, to suit the newer day: New loves are sweet as those that went before: Free love–free field–we love but while we may.
92. I will be deafer than the blue-eyed cat, And thrice as blind as any noonday owl, To holy virgins in their ecstasies.
93. Silence, beautiful voice.
94. Blind and naked ignorance delivers brawling judgments, unashamed, on all things all day long
95. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.
96. “Love’s too precious to be lost,
A little grain shall not be spilt.”
97. I remain Mistress of mine own self and mine own soul
98. That which we are, we are, and if we are ever to be any better, now is the time to begin.
99. To me He is all fault who hath no fault at all: For who loves me must have a touch of earth.
100. I wind about, and in and out, – With here a blossom sailing, – And here and there a lusty trout, – And here and there a grayling.
101. Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
102. The city is built To music, therefore never built at all, And therefore built forever.
103. He that wrongs a friend Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about A silent court of justice in his breast, Himself the judge and jury, and himself The prisoner at the bar ever condemned.
104. Rain, rain, and sun! A rainbow in the sky!
105. Jewels five-words-long, That on the stretch’d forefinger of all Time Sparkle forever.
106. We are ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times.
107. The wild swan’s death-hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear The warble was low, and full and clear.
108. Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths.
109. Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove.
110. The old order changeth yielding place to new And God fulfills himself in many ways Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me I have lived my life and that which I have done May he within himself make pure but thou If thou shouldst never see my face again Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.
111. On all things created remaineth the half-effaced signature of God, Somewhat of fair and good, though blotted by the finger of corruption.
112. We are self-uncertain creatures, and we may Yea, even when we know not, mix our spites And private hates with our defence of Heaven.
113. Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; these three alone lead one to sovereign power.
114. Better not to be at all Than not to be noble.
115. The quiet sense of something lost
116. “Any man that walks the mead
In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find,
According as his humors lead,
A meaning suited to his mind.”
117. Every man, for the sake of the great blessed Mother in Heaven, and for the love of his own little mother on earth, should handle all womankind gently, and hold them in all Honor.
118. And blessings on the falling out That all the more endears, When we fall out with those we love And kiss again with tears!
119. We cannot be kind to each other here for even an hour. We whisper, and hint, and chuckle and grin at our brother’s shame; however you take it we men are a little breed.
120. And what delights can equal those That stir the spirit’s inner deeps, When one that loves but knows not, reaps A truth from one that loves and knows?
121. The wind sounds like a silver wire, And from beyond the noon a fire Is pour’d upon the hills, and nigher The skies stoop down in their desire; And, isled in sudden seas of light, My heart, pierced thro’ with fierce delight, Bursts into blossom in his sight.
122. “Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.
Old year you must not die;
You came to us so readily,
You lived with us so steadily,
Old year you shall not die.”
123. Forgive my grief for one removed Thy creature whom I found so fair I trust he lives in Thee and there I find him worthier to be loved.
124. Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be… And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
125. Wearing the white flower of a blameless life, Before a thousand peering littlenesses, In that fierce light which beats upon a throne, And blackens every blot.
126. Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life; … ‘So careful of the type’, but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, ‘A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go’ … Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation’s final law- Tho’ Nature red in tooth and claw With ravine, shrieked against his creed.
127. Shall love be blamed for want of faith?
128. Ring out old shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace.
129. That man’s the best cosmopolite Who loves his native country best.
130. All the windy ways of men Are but dust that rises up, And is lightly laid again.
131. “In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.”
132. Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.
133. No rock so hard but that a little wave may beat admission in a thousand years.
134. He is all fault who has no fault at all.
135. The old order changes yielding place to new.
136. I can’t be anonymous by reason of your confounded photographs. (To Julia Margaret Cameron)
137. The thrall in person may be free in soul
138. The splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
139. Come not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by. Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest; Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie: Go by, go by.
140. Man is man, and master of his fate.
141. What was once to me mere matter of the fancy now has grown the vast necessity of heart and life.
142. Blow trumpet, for the world is white with May.
143. From yon blue heaven above us bent, The grand old gardener and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent.
144. The song that nerves a nation’s heart is in itself a deed.
145. It was my duty to have loved the highest; It surely was my profit had I known: It would have been my pleasure had I seen. We needs must love the highest when we see it, Not Lancelot, nor another.
146. The year is dying in the night.
147. Those who depend on the merits of their ancestors may be said to search in the roots of the tree for those fruits which the branches ought to produce.
148. I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel For words, like nature, half reveal And half conceal the soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain A use measured language lie’s The sad mechanic exercise Like dull narcotic’s, numbing pain In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er Like coarsest clothes against the cold But large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more.
149. If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.
150. He that wrongs his friend, wrongs himself more.
151. Wearing all that weight Of learning lightly like a flower.
152. A truth looks freshest in the fashions of the day.
153. “Ah, when shall all men’s good
Be each man’s rule, and universal peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,
Thro’ all the circle of the golden year?”
154. The words ‘far, far away’ had always a strange charm.
155. And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.
156. I am going a long way With these thou seëst-if indeed I go (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)- To the island-valley of Avilion, Where falls not hail or rain or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.
157. The bearing and the training of a child Is woman’s wisdom.
158. Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.
159. “Lady, for indeed
I loved you and I deemed you beautiful,
I cannot brook to see your beauty marred
Through evil spite: and if ye love me not,
I cannot bear to dream you so forsworn:
I had liefer ye were worthy of my love,
Than to be loved again of you – farewell;
And though ye kill my hope, not yet my love,
Vex not yourself: ye will not see me more.”
160. That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.
161. “We love but while we may;
And therefore is my love so large for thee,
Seeing it is not bounded save by love.”
162. “Love is hurt with jar and fret;
Love is made a vague regret.”
163. I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.
164. She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott.
165. All experience is an arch wherethro’ gleams that untraveled world whose margins fade forever and forever as we move.
166. “Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.”
167. No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don’t knock your friends. Don’t knock your enemies. Don’t knock yourself.
168. A beam in darkness: let it grow.
169. “There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, “”She is near, she is near;””
And the white rose weeps, “”She is late;””
The larkspur listens, “”I hear; I hear;””
And the lily whispers, “”I wait.”””
170. The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself.
171. For always roaming with a hungry heart.
172. I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage, The linnet born within the cage, That never knew the summer woods: I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time, Unfetter’d by the sense of crime, To whom a conscience never wakes; Nor, what may count itself as blest, The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth; Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; ‘Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.
173. How fares it with the happy dead?
174. Nature, red in tooth and claw.
175. For every worm beneath the moon Draws different threads, and late and soon Spins, toiling out his own cocoon.
176. Cricket, however, has more in it than mere efficiency. There is something called the spirit of cricket, which cannot be defined.
177. “But for the unquiet heart and brain
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise
Like dull narcotics numbing pain.”
178. And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
179. I heard no longer The snowy-banded, dilettante, Delicate-handed priest intone.
180. Gorgonised me from head to foot With a stony British stare.
181. Shall the hag Evil die with the child of Good, Or propagate again her loathèd kind, Thronging the cells of the diseased mind, Hateful with hanging cheeks, a withered brood, Though hourly pastured on the salient blood?
182. And wheresoe’er thou move, good luck Shall fling her old shoe after.
183. Faith is believing what we cannot prove.
184. Love is the only gold.
185. O love, O fire! once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
186. The many fail: the one succeeds.
187. Here at the quiet limit of the world.
188. “And others’ follies teach us not,
Nor much their wisdom teaches,
And most, of sterling worth, is what
Our own experience preaches.”
189. The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs the deep.
190. We needs must love the highest when we see it.
191. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.
192. Tis a morning pure and sweet, And a dewy splendour falls On the little flower that clings To the turrets and the walls; ‘Tis a morning pure and sweet, And the light and shadow fleet; She is walking in the meadow, And the woodland echo rings; In a moment we shall meet; She is singing in the meadow, And the rivulet at her feet Ripples on in light and shadow To the ballad that she sings.
193. “All is well, tho’ faith and form
Be sunder’d in the night of fear.”
194. I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley.
195. “After-dinner talk
Across the walnuts and the wine.”
196. Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, oh sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.
197. And was the day of my delight As pure and perfect as I say?
198. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.
199. Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow for ever and for ever.
200. And sometimes through the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two.
201. Dead sounds at night come from the inmost hills. Like footsteps upon wool.
202. Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp’d no more – Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.
203. Twilight and evening bell, and after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell when I embark.
204. Arise, go forth, and conquer as of old.
205. Let observation with extended observation observe extensively.
206. “I am any man’s suitor,
If any will be my tutor:
Some say this life is pleasant,
Some think it speedeth fast,
In time there is no present,
In eternity no future,
In eternity no past.
We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die.
Who will riddle me the how and the why?”
207. And oft I heard the tender dove In firry woodlands making moan.
208. Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side ? Is there no baseness we would hide ? No inner vileness that we dread ? How many a father have I seen A sober man, among his boys Whose youth was full of foolish noise.
209. But every page having an ample marge, And every marge enclosing in the midst A square of text that looks a little blot.
210. “Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.”
211. This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse.
212. What are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
213. Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
214. The world which credits what is done is cold to all that might have been.
215. “He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.”
216. Man is the hunter; women are the game; those sleek and shining creatures of the chase. We hunt them for the beauty of their skins; they love us for it, and we ride them down.
217. But while I breathe Heaven’s air and Heaven looks down on me, And smiles at my best meanings, I remain Mistress of mine own self and mine own soul.
218. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.
219. Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new.
220. The smell of violets, hidden in the green, Pour’d back into my empty soul and frame The times when I remembered to have been Joyful and free from blame.
221. A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely fair.
222. I do but sing because I must; and pipe but as the linnets sing.
223. Let me go: take back thy gift: Why should a man desire in any way To vary from the kindly race of men, Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance Where all should pause, as is most meet for all? …Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears, And make me tremble lest a saying learnt, In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true? ‘The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.’ – Tithonus
224. I hold it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things.
225. The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man, And the man said, “Am I your debtor?” And the Lord–“Not yet: but make it as clean as you can, And then I will let you a better.
226. “Love’s arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,
And Hope kiss’d Love, and Love drew in her breath
In that close kiss and drank her whisper’d tales.
They said that Love would die when Hope was gone.
And Love mourn’d long, and sorrow’d after Hope;
At last she sought out Memory, and they trod
The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,
And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears.”
227. Battering the gates of heaven with the storms of prayer.
228. “Whate’er thy joys, they vanish with the day:
Whate’er thy griefs, in sleep they fade away,
To sleep! to sleep!
Sleep, mournful heart, and let the past be past:
Sleep, happy soul, all life will sleep at last.”
229. Courtesy wins woman all as well. As valor may, but he that closes both is perfect.
230. Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of: Wherefore, let they voice, Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
231. Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades Forever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life!
232. Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
233. Can calm despair and wild unrest Be tenants of a single breast, Or sorrow such a changeling be?
234. I am half-sick of shadows,’ said The Lady of Shalott.
235. “Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower-but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, all in all,
I should know what God and man is.”
236. I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time.
237. There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tir’d eyelids upon tir’d eyes; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. Here are cool mosses deep, And thro’ the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
238. In the long years liker they must grow; The man be more of woman, she of man.
239. Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
240. Who is wise in love, love most, say least.
241. A day may sink or save a realm.
242. How many a father have I seen, A sober man, among his boys, Whose youth was full of foolish noise.
243. And every dew-drop paints a bow.
244. What’s up is faith, what’s down is heresy.
245. But the churchmen fain would kill their church, As the churches have kill’d their Christ.
Conclusion: Alfred Lord Tennyson Quotes
The power of Alfred Lord Tennyson quotes lies in their ability to evoke thought and emotion, even in today’s fast-paced world.
His words encourage us to reflect on our experiences, cherish the beauty around us, and find strength in difficult times.
Through his poetry, Tennyson offers a timeless perspective on the human journey, making his quotes a source of inspiration for generations to come.
