Alfred, Lord Tennyson Quotes

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This world was once a fluid haze of light,
Till toward the centre set the starry tides,
And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast
The planets: then the monster, then the man.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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
Man for the field and woman for the hearth:
Man for the sword and for the needle she:
Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion.

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

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

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Like some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With swarthy webs.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world
Like one great garden show'd,
And thro' the wreaths of floating dark up-curl'd,
Rare sunrise flow'd. And Freedom rear'd in that august sunrise
Her beautiful bold brow,
When rites and forms before his burning eyes
Melted like snow.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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
It was the time when lilies blow,
And clouds are highest up in air.
Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe
To give his cousin, Lady Clare.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Fires that shook me once, but now to silent ashes fall'n away.
Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Of me you shall not win renown:
You thought to break a country heart
For pastime, ere you went to town.
At me you smiled, but unbeguiled
I saw the snare, and I retired;
The daughter of a hundred earls,
You are not one to be desired.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
And dark and true and tender is the North.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd
To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Half a league half a league
Half a league onward
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward the Light Brigade
Charge for the guns' he said
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
If Nature put not forth her power
About the opening of the flower,
Who is it that could live an hour?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Her manners had not that repose
Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The song that nerves a nation's heart
Is in itself a deed.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
O eyes long laid in happy sleep!
O happy sleep, that lightly fled!
O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!
O love, thy kiss would wake the dead!

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Love your enemy, bless your haters, said the Greatest of the great;
Christian love among the Churches looked the twin of heathen hate.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Once in a golden hour, I cast to earth a seed, And up there grew a flower, That others called a weed.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
He that shuts love out, in turn shall be
Shut out from love, and on her threshold lie
Howling in the outer darkness.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson