Alfred Tennyson Quotes & Sayings

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road runs by
To many-towered Camelot. — Alfred Tennyson

Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.
All things must die. — Alfred Tennyson

The Flower

Once in a golden hour
I cast to earth a seed.
Up there came a flower,
The people said, a weed.

To and fro they went
Thro' my garden-bower,
And muttering discontent
Cur'd me and my flower.

Then it grew so tall
It wore a crown of light,
But thieves from o'er the wall
Stole the seed by night.

Sow'd it far and wide
By every town and tower,
Till all the people cried,
"Splendid is the flower."

Read my little fable:
He that runs may read.
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed.

And some are pretty enough,
And some are poor indeed;
And now again the people
Call it but a weed. — Alfred Tennyson

Time...a maniac scattering dust. — Alfred Tennyson

In her right hand the lily, in her left
The letter--all her bright hair streaming down--
And all the coverlid was cloth of gold
Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white
All but her face, and that clear-featured face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead,
But fast asleep, and lay as though she smiled. — Alfred Tennyson

O let the solid ground
Not fail beneath my feet
Before my life has found
What some have found so sweet;
Then let come what come may,
What matter if I go mad,
I shall have had my day.

Let the sweet heavens endure,
Not close and darken above me
Before I am quite quite sure
That there is one to love me;
Then let come what come may
To a life that has been so sad,
I shall have had my day. — Alfred Tennyson

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river:
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be
For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever. — Alfred Tennyson

I fain would follow love, if that could be;
I needs must follow death, who calls for me;
Call and I follow, I follow! let me die. — Alfred Tennyson

Who is wise in love, love most, say least. — Alfred Tennyson

Shall love be blamed for want of faith? — Alfred Tennyson

Few from too near inspection fail to lose, Distance on all a mellowing haze bestows; And who is not indebted to that aid Which throws his failures into welcome shade? — Alfred Tennyson

Life is brief but love is LONG . — Alfred Tennyson

The Oak

Live thy Life,
Young and old,
Like yon oak,
Bright in spring,
Living gold;

Summer-rich
Then; and then
Autumn-changed
Soberer-hued
Gold again.

All his leaves
Fall'n at length,
Look, he stands,
Trunk and bough
Naked strength. — Alfred Tennyson

Brothers in Art: a friendship so complete — Alfred Tennyson

Be thou as the immortal are, Who dwell beneath their God's own wing A spirit of light, a living star, A holy and a searchless thing: But oh! forget not those who mourn, Because thou canst no more return. — Alfred Tennyson

the deep moans round with many voices. — Alfred Tennyson

=The Burial of Love= His eyes in eclipse, Pale cold his lips, The light of his hopes unfed, Mute his tongue, His bow unstrung With the tears he hath shed, Backward drooping his graceful head. Love is dead; His last arrow sped; He hath not another dart; Go--carry him to his dark deathbed; Bury him in the cold, cold heart-- Love is dead. — Alfred Tennyson

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.


He fought his doubts and gather'd strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them: thus he came at length


To find a stronger faith his own;
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone, — Alfred Tennyson

Then some one said, "We will return no more";
And all at once they sang, "Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam. — Alfred Tennyson

A beam in darkness: let it grow. — Alfred Tennyson

Seal'd her minefrom her first sweet breath
Mine, and mine by right, from birth till death
Mine, mine-our fathers have sworn. — Alfred Tennyson

And while he waited in the castle court,
The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang
Clear through the open casement of the hall,
Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird,
Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,
Moves him to think what kind of bird it is
That sings so delicately clear, and make
Conjecture of the plumage and the form;
So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;
And made him like a man abroad at morn
When first the liquid note beloved of men
Comes flying over many a windy wave
To Britain, and in April suddenly
Breaks from a coppice gemmed with green and red,
And he suspends his converse with a friend,
Or it may be the labour of his hands,
To think or say, 'There is the nightingale;'
So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,
'Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me. — Alfred Tennyson

Tell thou the King and all his liars, that I
Have founded my Round Table in the North,
And whatsoever his own knights have sworn
My knights have sworn the counter to it -- and say
My tower is full of harlots, like his court,
But mine are worthier, seeing thy profess
To be none other than themselves -- and say
My knights are all adulterers like his own,
But mine are truer, seeing they profess
To be none other; and say his hour is come,
The heathen are upon him, his long lance
Broken, and his Excalibur a straw. — Alfred Tennyson

What hope is here for modern rhyme
To him, who turns a musing eye
On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lie
Foreshorten'd in the tract of time?


These mortal lullabies of pain
May bind a book, may line a box,
May serve to curl a maiden's locks;
Or when a thousand moons shall wane


A man upon a stall may find,
And, passing, turn the page that tells
A grief, then changed to something else,
Sung by a long-forgotten mind.


But what of that? My darken'd ways
Shall ring with music all the same;
To breathe my loss is more than fame,
To utter love more sweet than praise. — Alfred Tennyson

Beat, happy stars, timing with things below,
Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell,
Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe
That seems to draw - but it shall not be so:
Let all be well, be well. — Alfred Tennyson

So sad, so fresh the days that are no more. — Alfred Tennyson

after all had eaten, then Geraint, For now the wine made summer in his veins, Let his eye rove in following, or rest On Enid at her lowly handmaid-work, — Alfred Tennyson

Sooner or later I too may passively take the print
Of the golden age--why not? I have neither hope nor trust;
May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint,
Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust. — Alfred Tennyson

I had liefer twenty years/Skip to the broken music of my brains/Than any broken music thou canst make. — Alfred Tennyson

Here at the quiet limit of the world. — Alfred Tennyson

Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let
Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set
In midst of knowledge, dream'd not yet. — Alfred Tennyson

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone — Alfred Tennyson

When in the down I sink my head,
Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times my breath;
Sleep, Death's twin-brother, knows not Death,
Nor can I dream of thee as dead: — Alfred Tennyson

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made. — Alfred Tennyson

A louse in the locks of literature. — Alfred Tennyson

O, were I loved as I desire to be!
What is there in the great sphere of the earth,
Or range of evil between death and birth,
That I should fear, - if I were loved by thee!
All the inner, all the outer world of pain,
Clear love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine;
As I have heard that somewhere in the main
Fresh-water springs come up through bitter brine.
'I were joy, not fear, clasped hand in hand with thee,
To wait for death - mute - careless of all ills,
Apart upon a mountain, though the surge
Of some new deluge from a thousand hills
Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge
Below us, as far on as eye could see. — Alfred Tennyson

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
too full for sound or foam,
when that which drew from out
the boundless deep
turns again home. — Alfred Tennyson

Yet I thought I saw her stand,
A shadow there at my feet,
High over the shadowy land. — Alfred 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 Tennyson

That which we are, we are. — Alfred Tennyson

I am a part of all that I have met. — Alfred Tennyson

Ah Maud, you milk-white fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife. — Alfred Tennyson

My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is;


This round of green, this orb of flame,
Fantastic beauty such as lurks
In some wild Poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.


What then were God to such as I?
'Twere hardly worth my while to choose
Of things all mortal, or to use
A tattle patience ere I die;


'Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease. — Alfred Tennyson

My religious beliefs also defied convention, leaning towards agnosticism and pandeism. — Alfred Tennyson

Praise to our Indian brothers, and the dark face have his due!
Thanks to the kindly dark faces who fought with us, faithful and few,
Fought with the bravest among us, and drove them, and smote them, and slew.
That ever upon the topment roof our banner in India blew. — Alfred Tennyson

Come friends, it's not too late to seek a newer world. — Alfred Tennyson

The seasons bring the flower again, And bring the firstling to the flock; And in the dusk of thee the clock Beats out the little lives of men — Alfred Tennyson

To many-towered Camelot — Alfred Tennyson

I follow up the quest despite of day and night and death and hell. — Alfred Tennyson

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more. — Alfred Tennyson

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. — Alfred Tennyson

Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. — Alfred Tennyson

Sometimes the heart sees what's invisible to the eye. — Alfred Tennyson

Know ye not then the Riddling of the Bards?
Confusion, and illusion, and relation,
Elusion, and occasion, and evasion? — Alfred Tennyson

Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day. — Alfred Tennyson

fairy changeling lay the mage; — Alfred Tennyson

He often lying broad awake...hath heard time flowing in the middle of the night,
And all things creeping to a day of doom.
How could ye know him? Ye were yet within
The narrower circle; he had wellnigh reached
The last, which with a region of white flame,
Pure without heat, into a larger air
Upburning, and an ether of black blue,
Investeth and ingirds all other lives. — Alfred Tennyson

The shell must break before the bird can fly. — Alfred Tennyson

No sword
Of wrath her right arm whirl'd,
But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word
She shook the world. — Alfred Tennyson

I will drink life to the lees. — Alfred Tennyson

I myself beheld the King
Charge at the head of all his Table Round,
And all his legions crying Christ and him,
And break them; and I saw him, after, stand
High on a heap of slain, from spur to plume
Red as the rising sun with heathen blood,
And seeing me, with a great voice he cried,
"They are broken, they are broken!" for the King,
However mild he seems at home, nor cares
For triumph in our mimic wars, the jousts -
For if his own knight cast him down, he laughs
Saying, his knights are better men than he -
Yet in this heathen war the fire of God
Fills him: I never saw his like: there lives
No greater leader. — Alfred Tennyson

The children born of thee are sword and fire,
Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws, — Alfred Tennyson

The year is dying in the night. — Alfred 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 Tennyson

And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shallot. — Alfred Tennyson

Love is the only gold. — Alfred Tennyson

Their's not to make reply, Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die: Into — Alfred Tennyson

Let us hush this cry of 'Forward', till ten thousand years have gone. — Alfred Tennyson

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag, -
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag, -

Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree, -
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea. — Alfred Tennyson

So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch'd me from the past,
And all at once it seem'd at last
The living soul was flash'd on mine,


And mine in his was wound, and whirl'd
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,


Aeonian music measuring out
The steps of Time - the shocks of Chance--
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt. — Alfred Tennyson

And is it that the haze of grief
Makes former gladness loom so great?
The lowness of the present state,
That sets the past in this relief?

Or that the past will always win
A glory from its being far;
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not when we moved therein? — Alfred Tennyson

Arthur spake, 'Behold, for these have sworn To wage my wars, and worship me their King; The old order changeth, yielding place to new; And we that fight for our fair father Christ, — Alfred Tennyson

...and Gareth bowed himself with all obedience to the King, and wrought
All kind of service with a noble ease
That graced the lowliest act in doing it. — Alfred Tennyson

We needs must love the highest when we see it. — Alfred Tennyson

Nature, red in tooth and claw. — Alfred Tennyson

I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I marked Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find Him not.
I waged His wars, and now I pass and die.
O me! for why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world,
But had not force to shape it as he would,
Till the High God behold it from beyond,
And enter it, and make it beautiful? — Alfred Tennyson

All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creaked;
The blue fly sang in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked,
Or from the crevice peered about.
Old faces glimmered through the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without. . . . — Alfred Tennyson

He makes no friends who never made a foe. — Alfred Tennyson

But I remain'd, whose hopes were dim,
Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth,
To wander on a darken'd earth,
Where all things round me breathed of him. — Alfred Tennyson

She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars, That marvellous round of milky light Below Orion, and those double stars Whereof the one more bright

Is circled by the other — Alfred Tennyson

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
"Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson — Alfred Tennyson

The quiet sense of something lost — Alfred Tennyson

While he gazed
The beauty of her flesh abashed the boy,
As though it were the beauty of her soul:
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 Tennyson

Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. — Alfred Tennyson

Frown not, old ghosts, if I be one of those
Who make you utter things you did not say,
And mould you all awry and mar your work;
For whatsoever knows us truly knows
That none can truly write his single day,
And none can write it for him upon earth. — Alfred Tennyson

I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair. — Alfred Tennyson

=Lost Hope= You cast to ground the hope which once was mine, But did the while your harsh decree deplore, Embalming with sweet tears the vacant shrine, My heart, where Hope had been and was no more. So on an oaken sprout A goodly acorn grew; But winds from heaven shook the acorn out, And filled the cup with dew. — Alfred Tennyson

For always roaming with a hungry heart. — Alfred Tennyson

But though we love kind Peace so well,
We dare not even by silence sanction lies. — Alfred Tennyson

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves a shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
and slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip into my bosom and be lost in me. — Alfred Tennyson

Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell. — Alfred Tennyson

Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die — Alfred Tennyson

There's not to reason why,
There's but to do and die — Alfred Tennyson

Authority forgets a dying king — Alfred Tennyson

God gives us Love, something to love, God lends us. — Alfred Tennyson

The old order changes, giving place to the new... least on good custom should corrupts the world. — Alfred Tennyson

Above,the fair hall-ceiling stately set Many an arch high up did lift,And angels rising and descending met With interchange of gift. — Alfred Tennyson

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. — Alfred Tennyson

I wither slowly in thine arms; here at the quiet limit of the world, a white hair'd shadow roaming like a dream. — Alfred Tennyson

.... yet all experience is an arc, where through gleams the untraveled world, whose margin fades forever, and forever as I move... — Alfred Tennyson