Lord Alfred Tennyson
Lord Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRSwas Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets...
beneath mountain sea watches wrinkled
Ringed with the azure world, he stands./ The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;/ He watches from his mountain walls,/ And like a thunderbolt he falls.
knight maiden
A maiden knight - to me is given/ Such hope, I know not fear.
desire indeed inner near
Do we indeed desire the dead/ Should still be near us at our side?/ Is there no baseness we would hide?/ No inner vileness that we dread?
ah fools petty sweat
Ah God! the petty fools of rhyme/ That shriek and sweat in pigmy wars.
ah hour might possible short souls
Ah Christ, that it were possible For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be.
feels guinea helps honor hurt
But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels
heart strength ten
My strength has the strength of ten because my heart is pure.
captain council foremost great
Great in council and great in war,/ Foremost captain of his time.
break climbed
I climbed the roofs at break of day;/ Sun-smitten Alps before me lay.
downward land
A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,/ Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go.
buried seen seldom
And when they buried him the little port/ Had seldom seen a costlier funeral.
central fill ghastly heard heavens nations rained
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew/ From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue.
forever join men
I chatter, chatter, as I flow, To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever
careful careless single type
So careful of the type she seems,/ So careless of the single life.