Alfred Tennyson Quotes

More than once when I
Sat all alone, revolving in myself
The word that is the symbol of myself,
The mortal limit of the Self was loosed,
And passed into the nameless, as a cloud
Melts into heaven. I touch’d my limbs, the limbs
Were strange, not mine — and yet no shade of doubt,
But utter clearness, and thro’ loss of Self
The gain of such large life as matched with ours
Were sun to spark — unshadowable in words,
Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world

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

When fill'd with tears that cannot fall,
I brim with sorrow drowning song.

gales! Blest be the bard, whom golden Fancy loves, He strays for ever thro’ her blooming bowers, Amid the rich profusion of her groves, And wreathes his forehead with her spicy flowers Of sunny radiance; but how blest is he Who feels the genuine force of high Sublimity!

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

For Knowledge is the swallow on the lake That sees and stirs the surface-shadow there But never yet hath dipt into the abysm

mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. For now the noonday quiet holds the hill: The grasshopper is silent in the grass: The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, Rests like a shadow, and the winds are dead. The purple flower droops: the golden bee Is lily-cradled: I alone awake. My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love, My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim, And I am all aweary of my life.

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.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver Through the wave that runs for ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot.

My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure.

There was no blood upon her maiden robes Sunn'd by those orient skies; But round about the circles of the globes Of her keen And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame WISDOM, a name to shake All evil dreams of power — a sacred name. And when she spake, Her words did gather thunder as they ran, And as the lightning to the thunder Which follows it, riving the spirit of man, Making earth wonder, So was their meaning to her words. No sword Of wrath her right arm whirl'd, But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word She shook the world.

For a breeze of morning moves, And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky, To faint in the light of the sun she loves, To faint in his light, and to die.

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.

A shadow flits before me, Not thou, but like to thee: Ah Christ, that it were possible For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down from Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
'Tirra lirra, tirra lirra:'
Sang Sir Lancelot.