Alfred, Lord Tennyson Quotes

1809–1892 England

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign, after William Wordsworth, and is one of the most popular English poets.

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Also known as: Alfred Lord Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Tennyson, Tennyson, Alfred

Random Alfred, Lord Tennyson quote

420 quotes

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

That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies;
That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright—
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

The world was never made;
It will change, but it will not fade.
So let the wind range;
For even and morn
Ever will be
Thro’ eternity.
Nothing was born;
Nothing will die;
All things will change.

Nothing Will Die (1830)

Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault?
All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen)
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more.

Maud; A Monodrama (1855)

But we grow old. Ah! when shall all men's good
Be each man's rule, and universal Peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,
Thro' all the circle of the golden year?

Ah God, for a man with heart, head, hand,
Like some of the simple great gone
Forever and ever by,
One still strong man in a blatant land,
Whatever they call him, what care I,
Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat—one
Who can rule and dare not lie.

Maud; A Monodrama (1855)

There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes.

The Lotos-Eaters (1832)

So many minds did gird their orbs with beams,
Tho' one did fling the fire;
Heaven flow'd upon the soul in many dreams
Of high desire.

The Poet (1830)

The time admits not flowers or leaves
To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies
The blast of North and East, and ice
Makes daggers at the sharpen’d eaves

In Memoriam A.H.H (1850)

She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars

The white flower of a blameless life.

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.

Ode to Memory (1830)

Come forth I charge thee, arise,
Thou of the many tongues, the myriad eyes!
Thou comest not with shows of flaunting vines
Unto mine inner eye,
Divinest Memory!

Ode to Memory (1830)

At last I heard a voice upon the slope
Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?"
To which an answer pealed from that high land,
But in a tongue no man could understand;
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn,
God made himself an awful rose of dawn.

I am any man's suitor,
If any will be my tutor:
Some say this life is pleasant,
Some think it speedeth fast,
In time there is no present,
In eternity no future,
In eternity no past. We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die.
Who will riddle me the how and the why?

She saw the snowy poles and moons of Mars,
That marvellous field of drifted light
In mid Orion, and the married stars—

We two were born together, and we die
Together by one doom…

Beat upon mine, little heart! beat, beat!
Beat upon mine! you are mine, my sweet!
All mine from your pretty blue eyes to your feet,
My sweet!

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control.

Unalterably and pesteringly fond.

Queen Mary: A Drama (1876)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.