Category Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,      Nor other thought her mind admits      But, he was dead, and there he sits,And he that brought him back is there. Then one deep love doth supersede      All other, when her ardent gaze      Roves from the living brother’s…

When Lazarus left his charnel-cave,      And home to Mary’s house return’d,      Was this demanded — if he yearn’dTo hear her weeping by his grave? “Where wert thou, brother, those four days?”      There lives no record of reply,      Which telling what it is to dieHad surely…

With trembling fingers did we weave      The holly round the Chrismas hearth;      A rainy cloud possess’d the earth,And sadly fell our Christmas bells-eve. At our old pastimes in the hall      We gambol’d, making vain pretence      Of gladness, with an awful senseOf one mute Shadow watching all. We paused:…

With such compelling cause to grieve      As daily vexes household peace,      And chains regret to his decease,How dare we keep our Christmas bells-eve; Which brings no more a welcome guest      To enrich the threshold of the night      With shower’d largess of delightIn dance and song and game and…

The time draws near the birth of Christ:      The moon is hid; the night is still;      The Christmas bells from hill to hillAnswer each other in the mist. Four voices of four hamlets round,      From far and near, on mead and moor,      Swell out and fail, as if…

I envy not in any moods      The captive void of noble rage,      The linnet born within the cage,That never knew the summer woods: I envy not the beast that takes      His license in the field of time,      Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,To whom a conscience never…

Still onward winds the dreary way;      I with it; for I long to prove      No lapse of moons can canker Love,Whatever fickle tongues may say. And if that eye which watches guilt      And goodness, and hath power to see      Within the green the moulder’d…

I know that this was Life, — the track      Whereon with equal feet we fared;      And then, as now, the day preparedThe daily burden for the back.       As light as carrier-birds in air;      I loved the weight I had to bear,Because it needed help…

And was the day of my delight      As pure and perfect as I say?      The very source and fount of DayIs dash’d with wandering isles of night. If all was good and fair we met,      This earth had been the Paradise      It never look’d…

Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,      Or breaking into song by fits,      Alone, alone, to where he sits,The Shadow cloak’d from head to foot, Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,      I wander, often falling lame,      And looking back to whence I came,Or on to where the…