Alfred Tennyson Quotes

Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be…
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

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.

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.

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me — That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honor and his toil. Death closes all; but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.

Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word.

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

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.

It is unconceivable that the whole Universe was merely created for us who live in this third-rate planet of a third-rate moon.

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.

To many-towered Camelot

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.

Let Knowledge grow from more to more; but more of reference in us dwell

For this is England's greatest son, He that gained a hundred fights, And never lost an English gun.

Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, From yon blue heavens above us bent The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.

Ah, faerics, dancing under the moon,
A Druid land, a Druid tune!
While still I may, I write for you
The love I lived, the dream I knew.