Alfred, Lord Tennyson Quotes

525 Sourced Quotes

O Sorrow, wilt Thou live with me No casual mistress, but a wife.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
It is the little rift within the lute,
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
A simple maiden in her flower
Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
You sought to prove how I could love,
And my disdain is my reply.
The lion on your old stone gates
Is not more cold to you than I.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I salute thee, Mantovano,
I that loved thee since my day began,
Wielder of the stateliest measure
Ever moulded by the lips of man.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever 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.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Who can fancy warless men?
Warless? war will die out late then. Will it ever? late or soon?
Can it, till this outworn earth be dead as yon dead world the moon?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,
Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves,
And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
But, friend, to me
He is all fault who hath no fault at all.
For who loves me must have a touch of earth.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags
To be lost evermore in the main.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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 amiable words And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Charm us, orator, till the lion look no larger than the cat.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I will love thee to the death,
And out beyond into the dream to come.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I grow in worth, and wit, and sense,
Unboding critic-pen,
Or that eternal want of pence,
Which vexes public men,
Who hold their hands to all, and cry
For that which all deny them —
Who sweep the crossings, wet or dry,
And all the world go by them.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I held 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.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
For every worm beneath the moon
Draws different threads, and late and soon
Spins, toiling out his own cocoon.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I don't think that since Shakespeare there has been such a master of the English language as I. But to be sure, I have nothing to say.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I toil beneath the curse,
But, knowing not the universe,
I fear to slide from bad to worse.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,
Came that 'Ave atque Vale' of the Poet's hopeless woe,
Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen-hundred years ago,
'Frater Ave atque Vale'—as we wander'd to and fro
Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below
Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio!

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
King am I, whatsoever be their cry;
And one last act of kinghood shalt thou see
Yet, ere I pass.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson