Alfred, Lord Tennyson Quotes

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Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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 for ever and for ever.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"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
'I am half sick of shadows,' said
The Lady of Shalott.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The king who fights his people fights himself.
And they my knights, who loved me once, the stroke
That strikes them dead is as my death to me.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"He does not love me for my birth
Nor for my lands so broad and fair;
He loves me for my own true worth,
And that is well," said Lady Clare.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage into commonest commonplace!

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Love is hurt with jar and fret;
Love is made a vague regret.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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
Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;
All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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
I Cannot Rest From Travel: I will drink
Life To The Lees: all times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext The Dim Sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Who never sold the truth to serve the hour,
Nor paltered with Eternal God for power.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
To reverence the King, as if he were
Their conscience, and their conscience as their King.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
A red-cross knight for ever kneeled
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right —
The leaves upon her falling light —
Thro' the noises of the night,
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott. Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Whither in after life retired
From brawling storms,
From weary wind,
With youthful fancy reinspired,
We may hold converse with all forms
Of the many-sided mind,
And those whom passion hath not blinded,
Subtle-thoughted, myriad-minded.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In sweet dreams softer than unbroken rest
Thou leddest by the hand thine infant Hope.
The eddying of her garments caught from thee
The light of thy great presence; and the cope
Of the half-attain'd futurity,
Though deep not fathomless,
Was cloven with the million stars which tremble
O'er the deep mind of dauntless infancy.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Blind and naked Ignorance Delivers brawling judgments, unashamed, On all things all day long.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
For as the base man, judging of the good,
Puts his own baseness in him by default
Of will and nature, so did Pelleas lend
All the young beauty of his own soul to hers

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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."

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Yet the moonlight is the sunlight and the sun himself will pass.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Yet not for power (power of herself
Would come uncall'd for) but to live by law,
Acting the law we live by without fear;
And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The shackles of an old love straitened him,
His honor rooted in dishonor stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson