Quotes & Sayings About Death 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

For this alone on Death I wreak The wrath that garners in my heart: He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd, Let darkness keep her raven gloss: Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss, To dance with death, to beat the ground. - Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. — Cassandra Clare

The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear The warble was low, and full and clear. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Every man at time of Death,
Would fain set forth some saying that may live
After his death and better humankind;
For death gives life's last word a power to live,
And, lie the stone-cut epitaph, remain
After the vanished voice, and speak to men. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Never, oh! never, nothing will die; The stream flows, The wind blows, The cloud fleets, The heart beats, Nothing will die. — Alfred Lord 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

The night comes on that knows not morn,
When I shall cease to be all alone,
To live forgotten, and love forlorn. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more! — Alfred Lord Tennyson

I came in haste with cursing breath, And heart of hardest steel; But when I saw thee cold in death, I felt as man should feel. For when I look upon that face, That cold, unheeding, frigid brown, Where neither rage nor fear has place, By Heaven! I cannot hate thee now! — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Old men must die, or the world would grow mouldy, would only breed the past again. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

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

I loved you, and my love had no return,
And therefore my true love has been my death. — Alfred Lord 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

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

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

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

Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand the downward slope to death. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

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

(In response to Alfred Tennyson's poem Vision of Sin , which included the line Every moment dies a man, // every moment one is born. ) If this were true, the population of the world would be at a stand-still. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of death. I would suggest that the next edition of your poem should read: "Every moment dies a man, every moment 1 1 / 16 is born." Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1 / 16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry. — Charles Babbage

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. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Sweet is true love that is given in vain, and sweet is death that takes away pain. — Alfred Lord 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

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

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

Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Be near me when my light is low ... And all the wheels of being slow. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

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

Twilight and evening bell, and after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell when I embark. — Alfred Lord 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

Hardy classified A Pair of Blue Eyes among 'Romances and Fantasies'. A favourite of Tennyson, its melancholy treatment of youth, love and death is expressive of late nineteenth-century susceptibilities. Not unnaturally in an early novel, Hardy draws freely on his own life. — Geoffrey Harvey

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

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