Quotes from work
The Foresters

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Foresters or, Robin Hood and Maid Marian is a play written by Alfred Tennyson and first produced with success in New York in 1892. A set of incidental music in nine movements was composed for the play by Arthur Sullivan.

“Robin: No man who truly loves and truly rules
His following but can keep his followers true.
I am one with mine. Traitors are rarely bred
Save under traitor kings.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Foresters

Act II, Scene i
The Foresters, Robin Hood and Maid Marion (1892)

“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)

“Forget thee…
Never—
Till Nature, high and low, and great and small
Forgets herself, and all her loves and hates
Sink again into Chaos.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Foresters

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

“Strike up a song, my friends, and then to bed.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Foresters

Act I, Scene III
The Foresters, Robin Hood and Maid Marion (1892)
Context: Friends,
I am only merry for an hour or two
Upon a birthday: if this life of ours
Be a good glad thing, why should we make us merry
Because a year of it is gone? but Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come
Whispering 'It will be happier;' and old faces
Press round us, and warm hands close with warm hands,
And thro' the blood the wine leaps to the brain
Like April sap to the topmost tree, that shoots
New buds to heaven, whereon the throstle rock'd
Sings a new song to the new year — and you,
Strike up a song, my friends, and then to bed.