Alfred, Lord Tennyson Quotes

525 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Dead sounds at night come from the inmost hills. Like footsteps upon wool.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Can calm despair and wild unrest Be tenants of a single breast, Or sorrow such a changeling be?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The woman's cause is man's. They rise or sink Together. / Dwarf'd or godlike, bound or free; miserable, / How shall men grow? - Let her be / All that not harms distinctive womanhood.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In crystal vapour everywhere Blue isles of heaven laugh'd between, And far, in forest-deeps unseen, The topmost elm-tree gather'd green From draughts of balmy air.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.
Old year you must not die;
You came to us so readily,
You lived with us so steadily,
Old year you shall not die.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
All night, through archways of the bridged pearl And portals of pure silver, walks the moon.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
But every page having an ample marge, And every marge enclosing in the midst A square of text that looks a little blot.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The water-lily starts and slides Upon the level in little puffs of wind, Tho' anchor'd to the bottom...

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Must my day be dark by reason, O ye Heavens, of your boundless nights, Rush of Suns, and roll of systems, and your fiery clash of meteorites?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Yonder cloud That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
These are Astronomy and Geology, terrible Muses!

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
And, below, stuck out The bones of some vast bulk that lived and roared Before man was.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I thought I could not breathe in that fine air That pure severity of perfect light I yearned for warmth and colour which I found In Lancelot.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I heard no longer The snowy-banded, dilettante, Delicate-handed priest intone.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
We are self-uncertain creatures, and we may Yea, even when we know not, mix our spites And private hates with our defence of Heaven.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
A pasty costly-made, Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay, Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks Imbedded and injellied.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
If I make dark my countenance, I shut my life from happier chance.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens? If all the world were falcons, what of that? The wonder of the eagle were the less, But he not less the eagle.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson