Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Quotes about love
Alfred, Lord Tennyson was British poet laureate. Explore interesting quotes on love.
St. 2
Tears, Idle Tears (1850)
“Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths.”
The Lover's Tale (1879), line 466
Act II, Scene i
The Foresters, Robin Hood and Maid Marion (1892)
Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 85
" Love and Duty http://www.readbookonline.net/read/4310/14259/", l. 1- 21 (1842)
Context: 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?
Not so. Shall Error in the round of time
Still father Truth? O shall the braggart shout
For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself
Thro' madness, hated by the wise, to law
System and empire? Sin itself be found
The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?
And only he, this wonder, dead, become
Mere highway dust? or year by year alone
Sit brooding in the ruins of a life,
Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself!
If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all,
Better the narrow brain, the stony heart,
The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless days,
The long mechanic pacings to and fro,
The set gray life, and apathetic end.
But am I not the nobler thro' thy love?
O three times less unworthy! likewise thou
Art more thro' Love, and greater than thy years.
“Of love that never found his earthly close,
What sequel?”
" Love and Duty http://www.readbookonline.net/read/4310/14259/", l. 1- 21 (1842)
Context: 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?
Not so. Shall Error in the round of time
Still father Truth? O shall the braggart shout
For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself
Thro' madness, hated by the wise, to law
System and empire? Sin itself be found
The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?
And only he, this wonder, dead, become
Mere highway dust? or year by year alone
Sit brooding in the ruins of a life,
Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself!
If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all,
Better the narrow brain, the stony heart,
The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless days,
The long mechanic pacings to and fro,
The set gray life, and apathetic end.
But am I not the nobler thro' thy love?
O three times less unworthy! likewise thou
Art more thro' Love, and greater than thy years.
The Poet (1830)
Context: The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above;
Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill,
He saw thro' his own soul.
The marvel of the everlasting will,
An open scroll,
Before him lay; with echoing feet he threaded
The secretest walks of fame:
The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed
And wing'd with flame,
Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue...
St. 4
Tears, Idle Tears (1850)
To J. S., stanza 4, from Poems (1832)
“Where love could walk with banish'd Hope no more.”
The Lover's Tale (1879), line 813
Part I, section xxii, stanza 2
Maud; A Monodrama (1855)
The Lover's Tale (1879), line 815
Pt. IV, st. 6
The Lady of Shalott (1832)
Letter to Emily Sellwood, quoted in Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son, by Hallam T. Tennyson (1897)
The First Quarrel, stanza VI., lines 3-4; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Love will conquer at the last.”
Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 280
Act I, Scene III
The Foresters, Robin Hood and Maid Marion (1892)
" Hands All Round http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/T/TennysonAlfred/verse/tiresias/handsallround.html", l. 1-4 (1885)