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Alfred, Lord Tennyson Quotes
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Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson was a British poet. He was the Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets.

✵ 6. August 1809 – 6. October 1892   •   Other names Lord Alfred Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: 213   quotes 34   likes

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Quotes

“Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

" A Dream of Fair Women http://home.att.net/%7ETennysonPoetry/dfw.htm", st. 2 (1832)

Time

“Old men must die, or the world would grow mouldy, would only breed the past again.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Becket, Prologue, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Men , World , Past

“At length I saw a lady within call,
Stiller than chisell'd marble, standing there;
A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"A Dream of Fair Women", st. 22

God , Daughters

“Have I not found a happy earth?
I least should breathe a thought of pain.
Would God renew me from my birth
I'd almost live my life again.
So sweet it seems with thee to walk,
And once again to woo thee mine —
It seems in after-dinner talk
Across the walnuts and the wine”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"The Miller's Daughter" (1832)

Life , God , Pain , Birth

“Mastering the lawless science of our law,—
That codeless myriad of precedent,
That wilderness of single instances.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Aylmer's Field (1864); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Law , Science

“From yon blue heaven above us bent,
The grand old gardener and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Lady Clara Vere de Vere

Stanza 7
Lady Clara Vere de Vere (1832)

Smile

“So dear a life your arms enfold,
Whose crying is a cry for gold.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Daisy, Stanza 24; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life , Cry

“Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"Break, Break, Break" (1842), st. 1

Sea

“A simple maiden in her flower
Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Lady Clara Vere de Vere

Stanza 2
Lady Clara Vere de Vere (1832)

Flowers

“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.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Lotos-Eaters

Choric Song, st. 1
The Lotos-Eaters (1832)

Music , Grass , Water , Night

“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.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

To J. S., stanza 19, from Poems (1832)

Lie , Soul , Sleep , Change

“Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Crossing the Bar

St. 3
Crossing the Bar (1889)

Sadness

“Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
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!”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Tears, Idle Tears

St. 4
Tears, Idle Tears (1850)

Love , Life , Death , Kiss

“Read my little fable:
He that runs may read.
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Flower; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Flowers , Reading

“Here and there a cotter's babe is royal—born by right divine;
Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Stanza 63
Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886)

Swine

“Is there evil but on earth? or pain in every peopled sphere?”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 197

Pain , People , Evil

“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.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

To J. S., stanza 4, from Poems (1832)

Love , God

“Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Lotos-Eaters

Choric Song, st. 8
The Lotos-Eaters (1832)

“She clad herself in a russet gown,
She was no longer Lady Clare:
She went by dale, and she went by down,
With a single rose in her hair.

The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought
Leapt up from where she lay.
Dropped her head in the maiden's hand.
And followed her all the way.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Lady Clare

Lady Clare (1842)

Way

“Unalterably and pesteringly fond.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Act v, scene 1
Queen Mary: A Drama (published 1876)

“I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson book Ulysses

Source: Ulysses (1842), l. 18 - 21

World , Parting

“Where love could walk with banish'd Hope no more.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Lover's Tale (1879), line 813

Love , Hope

“No sound is breathed so potent to coerce
And to conciliate, as their names who dare
For that sweet mother-land which gave them birth
Nobly to do, nobly to die.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Tiresias, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Birth

“Is there evil but on earth? Or pain in every peopled sphere?
Well, be grateful for the sounding watchword "Evolution" here.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 198

Pain , People , Evil

“Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Lady of Shalott

Pt. I, st. 2
The Lady of Shalott (1832)

“Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 200

“One still strong man in a blatant land.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Part I, section x, stanza 5
Maud; A Monodrama (1855)

Strong

“Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,
As fits an universal woe,
Let the long, long procession go,
And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow,
And let the mournful martial music blow;
The last great Englishman is low.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

St. III
Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington (1852)

Sadness , Music , Universe

“Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"Break, Break, Break" (1842), st. 4

Sea , Dead

“I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house,
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.
I said, "O Soul, make merry and carouse,
Dear soul, for all is well."”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Palace of Art

"The Palace of Art", st. 1 (1832)

Pleasure , Soul , Housing

“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.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

To the Queen, st. 8 (1851)

Freedom , Season

“If I come dressed like a village maid,
I am but as my fortunes are:
I am a beggar born," she said,
"And not the Lady Clare.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Lady Clare

Lady Clare (1842)

“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.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere

Kiss , Heart , Perfection

“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,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Part I, section xxii, stanza 2
Maud; A Monodrama (1855)

Love , Light , Sun

“She with all the charm of woman,
She with all the breadth of man.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 48

“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.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Foresters

Song, Act I, Scene ii
The Foresters, Robin Hood and Maid Marion (1892)

Life , Soul , Sleep , Past

“Speak no more of his renown,
Lay your earthly fancies down,
And in the vast cathedral leave him,
God accept him, Christ receive him!”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

St. IX
Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington (1852)

God , Christ

“Who shall call me ungentle, unfair,
I long'd so heartily then and there
To give him the grasp of fellowship;
But while I past he was humming an air,
Stopt, and then with a riding whip,
Leisurely tapping a glossy boot,
And curving a contumelious lip,
Gorgonised me from head to foot
With a stony British stare.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Part I, section xiii, stanza 2
Maud; A Monodrama (1855)

Past

“For it was in the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Recollections of the Arabian Nights, stanza 1, from Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830)

“All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

" The Vision of Sin http://home.att.net/%7ETennysonPoetry/vs.htm", sec. 4 (1842)

Men , Way

“What use to brood? This life of mingled pains
And joys to me,
Despite of every Faith and Creed, remains
The Mystery.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

To Mary Boyle, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life , Pain , Faith , Joy

“He often lying broad awake, and yet
Remaining from the body, and apart
In intellect and power and will, hath heard
Time flowing in the middle of the night,
And all things creeping to a day of doom.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

" The Mystic http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Early-Poems-of-Alfred-Lord-Tennyson9.html" (1830)

Lying , Time , Night

“"Shall we fight or shall we fly?
Good Sir Richard, tell us now,
For to fight is but to die!
There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set."
And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good English men.
Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,
For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet."”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

St. 4
The Revenge (1878)

Men , Children , Dogs , Time

“For this is England's greatest son,
He that gained a hundred fights,
And never lost an English gun.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

St. VI
Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington (1852)

Fight

“She sees the Best that glimmers thro’ the Worst,
She feels the Sun is hid but for a night,
She spies the summer thro’ 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 wail’d ‘Mirage’!”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

From The Ancient Sage (1885), lines 72-77

Feeling , Winter , Sun , Summer

“Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault?
All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen)
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Part I, section ii
Maud; A Monodrama (1855)

Beauty , Perfection , Dead

“We are ancients of the earth,
And in the morning of the times.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Daydream: L'Envoi, lines 231-32, from The Complete Works of Alfred Tennyson (1879)

Time

“For Knowledge is the swallow on the lake
That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there
But never yet hath dipt into the abysm”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

From The Ancient Sage (1885), lines 37-39

Knowledge

“To persecute
Makes a faith hated, and is furthermore
No perfect witness of a perfect faith
In him who persecutes.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Act iii, scene 4
Queen Mary: A Drama (published 1876)

Hate , Faith , Perfection

“Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: "I know you are no coward;
You fly them for a moment to fight with them again.
But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.
I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,
To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain."”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

St. 2
The Revenge (1878)

Men , Dogs , Lying , Fight