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.
246. And down I went to fetch my bride: But, Alice, you were ill at ease; This dress and that by turns you tried, Too fearful that you should not please. I loved you better for your fears, I knew you could not look but well; And dews, that would have fall’n in tears, I kiss’d away before they fell.
247. I stood on a tower in the wet, And New Year and Old Year met, And winds were roaring and blowing: And I said, “O years, that meet in tears, Have ye aught that is worth the knowing? Science enough and exploring, Wanderers coming and going, Matter enough for deploring, But aught that is worth the knowing?
248. Where love could walk with banish’d Hope no more.
249. I know that age to age succeeds, Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds, A dust of systems and of creeds.
250. It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles whom we knew.
251. What the sunshine is to the flower, the Lord Jesus Christ is to my soul.
252. My life has crept so long on a broken wing Through cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear, That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing.
253. God’s finger touched him, and he slept.
254. Like glimpses of forgotten dreams.
255. Never, oh! never, nothing will die; The stream flows, The wind blows, The cloud fleets, The heart beats, Nothing will die.
256. Sweet were the days when I was all unknown, But when my name was lifted up, the storm Brake on the mountain and I cared not for it. Right well know I that fame is half disfame.
257. . . . More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheeps or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Not only for themselves but for those who call them friend? For so this whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
258. She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look’d down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack’d from side to side; “The curse is come upon me,” cried The Lady of Shalott.
259. The jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels.
260. And ah for a man to arise in me, That the man I am may cease to be!
261. Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death.
262. “The time draws near the birth of Christ;
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.”
263. “Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter’d with the shocks of doom,
To shape and use.”
264. …and our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.
265. A man had given all other bliss, And all his worldly worth for this To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips.
266. Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens? If all the world were falcons, what of that? The wonder of the eagle were the less, But he not less the eagle.
267. Of love that never found his earthly close, What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts; Or all the same as if he had not been?
268. Better not be at all than not be noble.
269. “Earth is dry to the centre,
But spring, a new comer,
A spring rich and strange,
Shall make the winds blow
Round and round,
Thro’ and thro’,
Here and there,
Till the air
And the ground
Shall be fill’d with life anew.”
270. For this is England’s greatest son, He that gain’d a hundred fights, And never lost an English gun.
271. Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.
272. And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thoughts; Which he may read that binds the sheaf, Or builds the house, or digs the grave, And those wild eyes that watch the waves In roarings round the coral reef.
273. Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange.
274. God made thee good as thou art beautiful.
275. Tis held that sorrow makes us wise.
276. For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
277. Like a dog, he hunts in dreams.
278. All Life needs for life is possible to will.
279. Too much wit makes the world rotten.
280. Happy he With such a mother! faith in womankind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him; and tho’ he trip and fall, He shall not blind his soul with clay.
281. Her court was pure, her life serene; God gave her peace; her land reposed; A thousand claims to reverence closed.
282. “Till last by Philip’s farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.”
283. Tho’ much is taken, much abides.
284. Things seen are mightier than things heard.
285. For love reflects the thing beloved.
286. Ring out the grief that saps the mind, for those that were here we see no more.
287. Authority forgets a dying king.
288. The long mechanic pacings to and fro, The set, gray life, and apathetic end.
289. The folly of all follies is to be love sick for a shadow.
290. And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo-flowers.
291. The passionate heart of the poet is whirled into folly and vice.
292. Ah! well away! Seasons flower and fade.
293. “I will love thee to the death,
And out beyond into the dream to come.”
294. If I make dark my countenance, I shut my life from happier chance.
295. Oh for someone with a heart, head and hand. Whatever they call them, what do I care, aristocrat, democrat, autocrat, just be it one that can rule and dare not lie.
296. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.
297. The woman’s cause is man’s. They rise or sink Together. / Dwarf’d or godlike, bound or free; miserable, / How shall men grow? – Let her be / All that not harms distinctive womanhood.
298. His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.
299. My mind is clouded with a doubt.
300. “I am on fire within.
There comes no murmur of reply.
What is it that will take away my sin,
And save me lest I die?”
301. “Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match’d with mine,
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.”
302. Who is this? And what is here? And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer; And they crossed themselves for fear, All the Knights at Camelot; But Lancelot mused a little space He said, “She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott.
303. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
304. Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace;Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,While the stars burn, the moons increase,And the great ages onward roll. Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet. Nothing comes to thee new or strange. Sleep full of rest from head to feet;Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.
305. Oh that it were possible, After long grief and pain, To find the arms of my true love, Around me once again
306. Old men must die, or the world would grow mouldy, would only breed the past again.
307. Woman is the lesser man.
308. Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone: And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose is blown. For a breeze of morning moves, And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky.
309. All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
310. The noonday quiet holds the hill.
311. “Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail
Against her beauty? May she mix
With men and prosper! Who shall fix
Her pillars? Let her work prevail.”
312. Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet- Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
313. Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.
314. Love will conquer at the last.
315. Half the night I waste in sighs, Half in dreams I sorrow after The delight of early skies; In a wakeful dose I sorrow For the hand, the lips, the eyes, For the meeting of the morrow, The delight of happy laughter, The delight of low replies.
316. “The night comes on that knows not morn,
When I shall cease to be all alone,
To live forgotten, and love forlorn.”
317. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land; Ring in the Christ that is to be.
318. Live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world.
319. Though thou wert scattered to the wind, Yet is there plenty of the kind.
320. It’s better to have tried and failed than to live life wondering what would’ve happened if I had tried
321. So many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be.
322. God and Nature met in light.
323. A smile abroad is often a scowl at home.
324. I grow in worth, and wit, and sense, Unboding critic-pen, Or that eternal want of pence, Which vexes public men.
325. A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long, That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle for ever.
326. Of happy men that have the power to die, And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
327. “Come, Time, and teach me many years,
I do not suffer in dream;
For now so strange do these things seem,
Mine eyes have leisure for their tears.”
328. Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
329. “I loved you, and my love had no return,
And therefore my true love has been my death.”
330. “All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr’d
To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.”
331. “Many a night I saw the Pleiads,
Rising thro’ the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies,
Tangled in a silver braid.”
332. What! I should call on that Infinite Love that has served us so well? Infinite cruelty rather, that made everlasting hell, Made us, foreknew us, foredoom’d us, and does what he will with his own; Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan.
333. Because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.
334. This world was once a fluid haze of light, Till toward the centre set the starry tides, And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast The planets: then the monster, then the man.
335. “Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last-far off-at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.”
336. Happy days roll onward leading up to golden years.
337. A still small voice spake unto me, ‘Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?
338. Be near me when my light is low… And all the wheels of being slow.
339. But thy strong Hours indignant work’d their wills, And beat me down and marr’d and wasted me, And tho’ they could not end me, left me maim’d To dwell in presence of immortal youth, Immortal age beside immortal youth, And all I was, in ashes. – Tithonus
340. “You, methinks you think you love me well;
For me, I love you somewhat; rest: and Love
Should have some rest and pleasure in himself,
Not ever be too curious for a boon,
Too prurient for a proof against the grain
Of him ye say ye love: but Fame with men,
Being but ampler means to serve mankind,
Should have small rest or pleasure in herself,
But work as vassal to the larger love,
That dwarfs the petty love of one to one.”
341. O hark,O hear! how thin and clear And thinner, clearer, farther going! O sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
342. What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?
343. “And on her lover’s arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold,
And far across the hills they went
In that new world which is the old.”
344. All things human change.
345. As the husband is the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, As the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
346. Through the ages one increasing purpose runs.
347. I came in haste with cursing breath, And heart of hardest steel; But when I saw thee cold in death, I felt as man should feel. For when I look upon that face, That cold, unheeding, frigid brown, Where neither rage nor fear has place, By Heaven! I cannot hate thee now!
348. “By shaping some august decree,
Which kept her throne unshaken still,
Broad-based upon her people’s will,
And compass’d by the inviolate sea.”
349. Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new, That which they have done but earnest of the things which they shall do.
350. I am a part of all that I have met.
351. Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was love.
352. “The sin
That neither God nor man can well forgive.”
353. And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!
354. “Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
News from the humming city comes to it
It sound of funeral or of marriage bells.”
355. “Of old sat Freedom on the heights
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starry lights;
She heard the torrents meet.”
356. I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.
357. Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool.
358. “There is no land like England,
Where’er the light of day be;
There are no hearts like English hearts,
Such hearts of oak as they be;
There is no land like England,
Where’er the light of day be:
There are no men like Englishmen,
So tall and bold as they be!
And these will strike for England,
And man and maid be free
To foil and spoil the tyrant
Beneath the greenwood tree.”
359. It may be that no life is found, Which only to one engine bound Falls off, but cycles always round.
360. With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter’s heart.
361. Nor at all can tell Whether I mean this day to end myself, Or lend an ear to Plato where he says, That men like soldiers may not quit the post Allotted by the Gods.
362. Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.
363. There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.
364. “Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls:
Man dreams of Fame while woman wakes to love.”
365. Cast all your cares on God; that anchor holds.
366. The last great Englishman is low.
367. “God gives us love. Something to love
He lends us; but when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone.”
368. He makes no friend who never made a foe.
369. The parting of a husband and wife is like the cleaving of a heart; one half will flutter here, one there.
370. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone.
371. “In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove;
In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”
372. Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand the downward slope to death.
373. Ours is not to wonder why. Ours is just to do or die.
374. As love, if love be perfect, casts out fear, so hate, if hate be perfect, casts out fear.
375. That loss is common would not make My own less bitter, rather more: Too common! Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break.
376. Gone – flitted away, Taken the stars from the night and the sun From the day! Gone, and a cloud in my heart.
377. By blood a king, in heart a clown.
378. The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world.
379. Theirs is not to make reply: Theirs is not to reason why: Theirs is but to do and die.
380. “Lo! sweeten’d with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.”
381. Tis not your work, but Love’s. Love, unperceived, A more ideal Artist he than all, Came, drew your pencil from you, made those eyes Darker than the darkest pansies, and that hair More black than ashbuds in the front of March.
382. An English homegrey twilight poured On dewy pasture, dewy trees, Softer than sleepall things in order stored, A haunt of ancient Peace.
383. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
384. Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.
385. There is always change, bad customs pass and give way to better ones.
386. The woods decay, the woods decay and fall.
387. Oh good gray head which all men knew!
388. God gives us love! Something to love He lends us; but when love is grown To ripeness, that on which it throve Falls off, and love is left alone: This is the curse of time.
389. Manners are not idle, but the fruit of loyal and of noble mind.
390. So sad, so fresh the days that are no more.
391. So I find every pleasant spot In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber, and the street, For all is dark where thou art not
392. My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.
393. “Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time.”
394. What rights are those that dare not resist for them?
395. Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love.
396. “Is there evil but on earth? Or pain in every peopled sphere?
Well, be grateful for the sounding watchword “”Evolution”” here.”
397. The same words conceal and declare the thoughts of men.
398. As she fled fast through sun and shade The happy winds upon her play’d, Blowing the ringlet from the braid.
399. It is unconceivable that the whole Universe was merely created for us who live in this third-rate planet of a third-rate moon.
400. ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
401. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.
402. Follow the deer? Follow the Christ the King. Live pure, speak true,right wrong, Follow the King– Else, wherefore born?
403. For now the poet cannot die, Nor leave his music as of old, But round him ere he scarce be cold Begins the scandal and the cry.
404. In time there is no present, In eternity no future, In eternity no past.
405. Science grows and Beauty dwindles.
406. The dirty nurse, Experience, in her kind Hath fouled me.
407. Guard your roving thoughts with a jealous care, for speech is but the dialer of thoughts, and every fool can plainly read in your words what is the hour of your thoughts.
408. If Nature put not forth her power About the opening of the flower, Who is it that could live an hour?
409. A sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier times.
410. This round of green, this orb of flame, Fantastic beauty; such as lurks In some wild poet, when he works Without a conscience or an aim.
411. Men at most differ as Heaven and Earth, but women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell.
412. “Every man at time of Death,
Would fain set forth some saying that may live
After his death and better humankind;
For death gives life’s last word a power to live,
And, lie the stone-cut epitaph, remain
After the vanished voice, and speak to men.”
413. “Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder’d string?
I am shamed through all my nature to have lov’d so slight a thing.”
414. “Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point. …
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns. …
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.”
415. She sleeps: her breathings are not heard In palace chambers far apart. The fragrant tresses are not stirr’d That lie upon her charmed heart She sleeps: on either hand upswells The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest: She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells A perfect form in perfect rest.
416. France had shown a light to all men, preached a Gospel, all men’s good; Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek’d and slaked the light with blood.
417. Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, And cling to faith beyond the forms of faith; She reels not at the storm of warring words; She brightens at the clash of “Yes” and “No”; She sees the best that glimmers through the worst; She feels the sun is hid for the night; She spies the summer through the winter bud; She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls; She hears the lark within the songless egg; She finds the fountain where they wailed “Mirage!”
418. Nature, so far as in her lies, imitates God.
419. There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen! There where the long street roars, hath been The stillness of the central sea. The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands; They melt like mist, the solid lands, Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
420. The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.
421. O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies, O skilled to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages.
422. So now I have sworn to bury All this dead body of hate I feel so free and so clear By the loss of that dead weight
423. Ring out the false, ring in the true.
424. I know transplanted human worth will bloom to profit otherwhere.
425. Launch your vessel, And crowd your canvas, And, ere it vanishes Over the margin, After it, follow it, FollowThe Gleam.
426. Sweet is every sound, Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro’ the lawn, The moans of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees.
427. Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.
428. He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
429. Read my little fable: He that runs may read. Most can raise the flowers now, For all have got the seed.
430. A louse in the locks of literature.
431. A life of nothing’s nothing worth, From that first nothing ere his birth, To that last nothing under earth.
432. The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
433. There she weaves by night and day, A magic web with colors gay. She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay, To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be, And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott.
434. It is hard to wive and thrive both in a year.
435. Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation’s final law Though Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shrieked against his creed.
436. I sometimes find it half a sin, To put to words the grief i feel, For words like nature,half reveal, and half conceal the soul within.
437. I have led her home, my love, my only friend. There is none like her, none, And never yet so warmly ran my blood, And sweetly, on and on Calming itself to the long-wished for end, Full to the banks, close on the prom- ised good.
438. Sin is too stupid to see beyond itself.
439. The mirror crack’d from side to side “The curse has come upon me,” cried The Lady of Shalott
440. O Blackbird! sing me something well: While all the neighbors shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground, Where thou may’st warble, eat and dwell.
441. A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.
442. “Faith and unfaith can ne’er be equal powers;
Unfaith is aught is want of faith in all.”
443. That which we are, we are.
444. The greater man the greater courtesy.
445. Name and fame! to fly sublime Through the courts, the camps, the schools Is to be the ball of Time, Bandied in the hands of fools.
446. Virtue must shape itself in deed.
447. Either sex alone is half itself.
448. “Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths;
Love laps his wings on either side the heart
Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts,
So that they pass not to the shrine of sound.”
449. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
450. “Red of the Dawn
Is it turning a fainter red? so be it, but when shall we lay
The ghost of the Brute that is walking and hammering us yet and be free?”
451. O last regret, regret can die!
452. I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage, The linnet born within the cage, That never knew the summer woods.
453. Man’s word is God in man.
454. And o’er the hills, and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, across the day, Thro’ all the world she follow’d him.
455. Her eyes are homes of silent prayers.
456. “She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthly bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.”
457. Faith lives in honest doubt.
458. Nothing in Nature is unbeautiful.
459. Come, my friends Tis not too late to seek a newer world Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die
460. Rich in saving common-sense, And, as the greatest only are, In his simplicity sublime.
461. Sweet is true love that is given in vain, and sweet is death that takes away pain.
462. And out of darkness came the hands that reach through nature, moulding men.
463. A simple maiden in her flower, Is worth a hundred coats of arms.
464. We are all a part of every person we have ever met.
465. Sweet is every sound, sweeter the voice, but every sound is sweet.
466. For this alone on Death I wreak The wrath that garners in my heart: He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak.
467. I waited for the train at Coventry; I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped The city’s ancient legend into this.
468. Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver.
469. The dream Dreamed by a happy man, when the dark East, Unseen, is brightening to his bridal morn.
470. One so small Who knowing nothing knows but to obey.
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.
