Alfred Tennyson Quotes

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

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.

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.

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.

He makes no friends who never made a foe.

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

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

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

For I dipt into the future,
far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there raind a ghastly dew
From the nations airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drums throbbd, no longer, and the battle-flags were furled
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

What rights are those that dare not resist for them?

In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All around the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.

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.

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

Not once or twice in our fair island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory.

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. . . .