Alfred Tennyson Quotes

What rights are those that dare not resist for them?
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
A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.
Alfred Tennyson
There has fallen a splendid tearFrom the passion-flower at the gate.She is coming, my dove, my dear;She is coming, my life, my fate.The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;"And the lily whispers, "I wait."She is coming, my own, my sweet;Were it ever so airy a tread,My heart would hear her and beat,Were it earth in an earthy bed;My dust would hear her and beat,Had I lain for a century dead,Would start and tremble under her feet,And blossom in purple and red.
Alfred Tennyson
Theirs not to make reply,Theirs not to reason why,Theirs but to do and die.Into the valley of DeathRode the six hundred.
Alfred Tennyson
Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die
Alfred Tennyson
Virtue - to be good and just -Every heart, when sifted well,Is a clot of warmer dust,Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.- The Vision of Sin
Alfred Tennyson
And down I went to fetch my bride:But, Alice, you were ill at ease;This dress and that by turns you tried,Too fearful that you should not please.I loved you better for your fears,I knew you could not look but well;And dews, that would have fall'n in tears,I kiss'd away before they fell.
Alfred Tennyson
I embrace the purpose of God and the doom assigned
Alfred Tennyson
The quiet sense of something lost
Alfred Tennyson
Let us hush this cry of 'Forward', till ten thousand years have gone.
Alfred Tennyson
Break, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!And I would that my tongue could utterThe thoughts that arise in me.O, well for the fisherman's boy,That he shouts with his sister at play!O, well for the sailor lad,That he sings in his boat on the bay!And the stately ships go onTo their haven under the hill;But O for the touch of a vanished hand,And the sound of a voice that is still!Break, break, break,At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!But the tender grace of a day that is deadWill never come back to me.
Alfred Tennyson
Authority forgets a dying king
Alfred Tennyson
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,The flying cloud, the frosty light;The year is dying in the night;Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.Ring out the old, ring in the new,Ring, happy bells, across the snow:The year is going, let him go;Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Alfred Tennyson
Behold, we know not anything;I can but trust that good shall fallAt last -- far off -- at last, to all,And every winter change to spring.
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
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
I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.
Alfred Tennyson
All precious things discovered lateTo those that seek them issue forth,For Love in sequel works with Fate,And draws the veil from hidden worth
Alfred Tennyson
Forerun thy peers, thy time, and letThy feet, millenniums hence, be set In midst of knowledge, dream'd not yet.
Alfred Tennyson
Yet all experience is an arch wherethroughGleams that untraveled world whose margin fadesForever and forever when I move.How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!As though to breathe were life!
Alfred Tennyson
He makes no friends who never made a foe.
Alfred Tennyson
No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.
Alfred Tennyson
And at the closing of the dayShe loosed the chain, and down she lay;The broad stream bore her far away,The Lady of Shallot.
Alfred Tennyson
Forgive my grief for one removedThy creature whom I found so fairI trust he lives in Thee and thereI find him worthier to be loved.
Alfred Tennyson
That loss is common would not makeMy own less bitter, rather more:Too common! Never morning woreTo evening, but some heart did break.
Alfred Tennyson
Wearing all that weight of learning like a flower.
Alfred Tennyson
O love, O fire! once he drewWith one long kiss my whole soul throughMy lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
Alfred Tennyson
The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but on the mastery of his passions.
Alfred Tennyson
Boldly they rode and well,Into the jaws of Death,Into the mouth of hell.
Alfred Tennyson
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.
Alfred Tennyson
There rolls the deep where grew the treeO earth, what changes hast thou seen!There where the long street roars hath been.The stillness of the central sea.
Alfred Tennyson
Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and for ever.
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
Time...a maniac scattering dust.
Alfred Tennyson
There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.
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 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
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and doleUnequal laws unto a savage race,That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
Alfred Tennyson
And this gray spirit yearning in desireTo follow knowledge like a sinking star,Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Alfred Tennyson
For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see,Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
Alfred Tennyson
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!As tho’ to breathe were life!
Alfred Tennyson
So runs my dream, but what am I?An infant crying in the nightAn infant crying for the lightAnd with no language but a cry.
Alfred Tennyson
I remainMistress of mine own self and mine own soul
Alfred Tennyson
Once in a golden hour I cast to earth a seed. Up there came a flower, The people said, a weed.
Alfred Tennyson
Though much is taken, much abides; and thoughWe are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Tennyson
Dear as remembered kisses after death,And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'dOn 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 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 Tennyson
Let me go: take back thy gift:Why should a man desire in any wayTo vary from the kindly race of men,Or pass beyond the goal of ordinanceWhere 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
But thy strong Hours indignant work’d their wills,And beat me down and marr’d and wasted me,And tho’ they could not end me, left me maim’dTo dwell in presence of immortal youth,Immortal age beside immortal youth,And all I was, in ashes. - Tithonus
Alfred Tennyson
T is not too late to seek a newer world.Push off, and sitting well in order smiteThe sounding furrows; for my purpose holdsTo sail beyond the sunset, and the bathsOf all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’We are not now that strength which in old daysMov’d earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Tennyson
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
Alfred Tennyson
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;Thou madest Life in man and brute;Thou madest Death; and lo, thy footIs on the skull which thou hast made.
Alfred Tennyson
If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.
Alfred Tennyson
Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.
Alfred Tennyson
I hold it true, whate'er befall;I feel it when I sorrow most;'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.
Alfred Tennyson
Half the night I waste in sighs,Half in dreams I sorrow afterThe delight of early skies;In a wakeful dose I sorrowFor the hand, the lips, the eyes,For the meeting of the morrow,The delight of happy laughter,The delight of low replies.
Alfred Tennyson
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despairRise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.
Alfred Tennyson
HopeSmiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering 'it will be happier'...
Alfred Tennyson
I am a part of all that I have met.
Alfred Tennyson