The Letters poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Still on the tower stood the vane, A black yew gloomed the stagnant air, I peered athwart the chancel pane And saw the altar cold and bare. A clog of lead was round my feet, A band of pain across my brow; “Cold altar, Heaven and earth shall meet Before you hear my marriage […]
The Last Tournament poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his mood Had made mock-knight of Arthur’s Table Round, At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods, Danced like a withered leaf before the hall. And toward him from the hall, with harp in hand, And from the crown thereof a carcanet Of ruby swaying to and fro, the […]
The Lady of Shalott | Best Love Poems
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The Holy Grail poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
From noiseful arms, and acts of prowess done In tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale, Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The Pure, Had passed into the silent life of prayer, Praise, fast, and alms; and leaving for the cowl The helmet in an abbey far away From Camelot, there, and not long after, died. […]
The Higher Pantheism poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains,- Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? Is not the Vision He, tho’ He be not that which He seems? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? Earth, these solid stars, […]
The Grandmother poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
I. And Willy, my eldest-born, is gone, you say, little Anne? Ruddy and white, and strong on his legs, he looks like a man. And Willy’s wife has written: she never was over-wise, Never the wife for Willy: he would n’t take my advice. II. For, Annie, you see, her father was not the […]
The Garden poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
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 […]
The Flower poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Once in a golden hour I cast to earth a seed. Up there came a flower, The people said, a weed. To and fro they went Thro’ my garden bower, And muttering discontent Cursed me and my flower. Then it grew so tall It wore a crown of light, But thieves from o’er […]
The Eagle poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
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. *** Lord Alfred Tennyson […]
The Deserted House poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Life and Thought have gone away Side by side, Leaving door and windows wide. Careless tenants they! All within is dark as night: In the windows is no light; And no murmur at the door, So frequent on its hinge before. Close the door; the shutters close; Or through the windows we shall […]
The Brook poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorpes, a little town, And half a hundred bridges. Till last by Philip’s farm I flow […]
Tears, Idle Tears poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends […]
Sweet And Low poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father […]
St. Agnes’ Eve poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Deep on the convent-roof the snows Are sparkling to the moon: My breath to heaven like vapour goes; May my soul follow soon! The shadows of the convent-towers Slant down the snowy sward, Still creeping with the creeping hours That lead me to my Lord: Make Thou my spirit pure and clear As are […]
Spring poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Birds’ love and birds’ song Flying here and there, Birds’ songand birds’ love And you with gold for hair! Birds’ songand birds’ love Passing with the weather, Men’s song and men’s love, To love once and forever. Men’s love and birds’ love, And women’s love and men’s! And you my wren with a crown […]
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
LIKE souls that balance joy and pain, With tears and smiles from heaven again The maiden Spring upon the plain Came in a sun-lit fall of rain. In crystal vapour everywhere Blue isles of heaven laugh’d between, And far, in forest-deeps unseen, The topmost elm-tree gather’d green From draughts of balmy air. Sometimes the […]
Sir Galahad poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
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. The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, The hard brands shiver on the steel, The splinter’d spear-shafts crack and fly, The horse and rider reel: They reel, they roll in […]
Sea Dreams poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
A city clerk, but gently born and bred; His wife, an unknown artist’s orphan child– One babe was theirs, a Margaret, three years old: They, thinking that her clear germander eye Droopt in the giant-factoried city-gloom, Came, with a month’s leave given them, to the sea: For which his gains were dock’d, however small: […]
Requiescat poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Fair is her cottage in its place, Where yon broad water sweetly slowly glides. It sees itself from thatch to base Dream in the sliding tides. And fairer she, but ah how soon to die! Her quiet dream of life this hour may cease. Her peaceful being slowly passes by To some more perfect […]
Recollection of the Arabian Nights poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
WHEN the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free In the silken sail of infancy, The tide of time flow’d back with me, The forward-flowing tide of time; And many a sheeny summer-morn, Adown the Tigris I was borne, By Bagdat’s shrines of fretted gold, High-walled gardens green and old; True Mussulman was I […]
Princess: A Medley: The splendour falls on castle walls poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
The splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! […]
Pelleas And Ettarre poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
King Arthur made new knights to fill the gap Left by the Holy Quest; and as he sat In hall at old Caerleon, the high doors Were softly sundered, and through these a youth, Pelleas, and the sweet smell of the fields Past, and the sunshine came along with him. `Make me thy knight, […]
Of Old Sat Freedom on the Heights poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Of old sat Freedom on the heights, The thunders breaking at her feet: Above her shook the starry lights: She heard the torrents meet. There in her place she did rejoice, Self-gather’d in her prophet-mind, But fragments of her mighty voice Came rolling on the wind. Then stept she down thro’ town and field […]
Of Old Sat Freedom poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Of old sat Freedom on the heights, The thunders breaking at her feet: Above her shook the starry lights: She heard the torrents meet. There in her place she did rejoice, Self-gather’d in her prophet-mind, But fragments of her mighty voice Came rolling on the wind. Then stept she down thro’ town and […]
O, Were I Loved As I Desire To Be! poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
O, were I loved as I desire to be! What is there in the great sphere of the earth, Or range of evil between death and birth, That I should fear,; if I were loved by thee! All the inner, all the outer world of pain, Clear love would pierce and cleave, if thou […]
O Beauty, Passing Beauty! poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
O beauty, passing beauty! Sweetest sweet! How can thou let me waste my youth in sighs? I only ask to sit beside thy feet. Thou knowest I dare not look into thine eyes. Might I but kiss thy hand! I dare not fold My arms about thee–scarcely dare to speak. And nothing seems to […]
Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font; The firefly wakens, waken thou with me. Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost, And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. Now lies the Earth […]
Northern Farmer: New Style poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Dosn’t thou ‘ear my ‘erse’s legs, as they canters awaäy? Proputty, proputty, proputty–that’s what I ‘ears ’em saäy. Proputty, proputty, proputty–Sam, thou’s an ass for thy paaïns: Theer’s moor sense i’ one o’ ‘is legs, nor in all thy braaïns. Woä–theer’s a craw to pluck wi’ tha, Sam; yon ‘s parson’s ‘ouse– Dosn’t thou […]
Move Eastward, Happy Earth poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Move eastward, happy earth, and leave Yon orange sunset waning slow: From fringes of the faded eve, O, happy planet, eastward go: Till over thy dark shoulder glow Thy silver sister world, and rise To glass herself in dewey eyes That watch me from the glen below. Ah, bear me with thee, lightly borne, […]
Morte D’Arthur poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
So all day long the noise of battle roll’d Among the mountains by the winter sea; Until King Arthur’s table, man by man, Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord, King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep, The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights, And bore […]
Minnie and Winnie poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Minnie and Winnie Slept in a shell. Sleep, little ladies! And they slept well. Pink was the shell within, Silver without; Sounds of the great sea Wander’d about. Sleep, little ladies! Wake not soon! Echo on echo Dies to the moon. Two bright stars Peep’d into the shell. “What are you dreaming […]
Milton (Alcaics) poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
O mighty-mouth’d inventor of harmonies, O skill’d to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages; Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr’d from Jehovah’s gorgeous armouries, Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean Rings to the roar of an angel onset– Me rather all that bowery loneliness, The […]
Memoriam A. H. H.: 72. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again, And howlest, issuing out of night, With blasts that blow the poplar white, And lash with storm the streaming pane? 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 in […]
Memoriam A. H. H.: 67. When on my bed the moonlight fall poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
When on my bed the moonlight falls, I know that in thy place of rest By that broad water of the west, There comes a glory on the walls: Thy marble bright in dark appears, As slowly steals a silver flame Along the letters of thy name, And o’er the number of thy years. […]
Memoriam A. H. H.: 44. How fares it with the happy dead? poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
How fares it with the happy dead? For here the man is more and more; But he forgets the days before God shut the doorways of his head. The days have vanish’d, tone and tint, And yet perhaps the hoarding sense Gives out at times (he knows not whence) A little flash, a mystic […]
Mariana In The South poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
With one black shadow at its feet, The house thro’ all the level shines, Close-latticed to the brooding heat, And silent in its dusty vines: A faint-blue ridge upon the right, An empty river-bed before, And shallows on a distant shore, In glaring sand and inlets bright. But “Aye Mary,” made she moan, And […]
Mariana poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
WITH BLACKEST moss the flower-plots Were thickly crusted, one and all: The rusted nails fell from the knots That held the pear to the gable-wall. The broken sheds look’d sad and strange: Unlifted was the clinking latch; Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. She only said, “My life is […]
Lucretius poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Lucilla, wedded to Lucretius, found Her master cold; for when the morning flush Of passion and the first embrace had died Between them, tho’ he loved her none the less, Yet often when the woman heard his foot Return from pacings in the field, and ran To greet him with a kiss, the master […]
Locksley Hall poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ‘t is early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn. ‘T is the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call, Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall; Locksley Hall, that in the […]
Lilian poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
I Airy, Fairy Lilian, Flitting, fairy Lilian, When I ask her if she love me, Claps her tiny hands above me, Laughing all she can; She ‘ll not tell me if she love me, Cruel little Lilian. II When my passion seeks Pleasance in love-sighs, She, looking thro’ and thro’ me Thoroughly to undo […]