Category Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Could I have said while he was here,      “My love shall now no further range;      There cannot come a mellower change,For now is love mature in ear”? Love, then, had hope of richer store:      What end is here to my complaint?      This haunting whisper…

“More than my brothers are to me,” —      Let this not vex thee, noble heart!      I know thee of what force thou artTo hold the costliest love in fee. But thou and I are one in kind,      As moulded like in Nature’s mint;      And…

If any vague desire should rise,      That holy Death ere Arthur died      Had moved me kindly from his side,And dropt the dust on tearlesss eyes; Then fancy shapes, as fancy can,      The grief my loss in him had wrought,      A grief as deep as life or thought,But stay’d in…

Again at Christmas bells did we weave      The holly round the Christmas hearth;      The silent snow possess’d the earth,And calmly fell our Christmas-eve: The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost,      No wing of wind the region swept,      But over all things brooding sleptThe quiet sense of something…

What hope is here for modern rhyme      To him, who turns a musing eye      On songs, and deeds, and lives, that lieForeshorten’d in the tract of time? These mortal lullabies of pain      May bind a book, may line a box,      May serve to curl a maiden’s…

Take wings of fancy, and ascend,      And in a moment set thy face      Where all the starry heavens of spaceAre sharpen’d to a needle’s end; Take wings of foresight; lighten thro’      The secular abyss to come,      And lo, thy deepest lays are dumbBefore the…

I leave thy praises unexpress’d      In verse that brings myself relief,      And by the measure of my griefI leave thy greatness to be guess’d; What practice howsoe’er expert      In fitting aptest words to things,      Or voice the richest-toned that sings,Hath power to give thee…

As sometimes in a dead man’s face,      To those that watch it more and more,      A likeness, hardly seen before,Comes out — to some one of his race: So, dearest, now thy brows are cold,      I see thee what thou art, and know      Thy likeness to…

So many worlds, so much to do,      So little done, such things to be,      How know I what had need of thee,For thou wert strong as thou wert true? The fame is quench’d that I foresaw,      The head hath miss’d an earthly wreath:      I…

Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again,      And howlest, issuing out of night,      With blasts that blow the poplar white, Day, when my crown’d estate begun      To pine in that reverse of doom,      Which sicken’d every living bloom,And blurr’d the splendour of the sun; Who usherest…