Quote #98

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these? Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys. Every gate is thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow. I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do? I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground, When the ranks are rolled in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound. But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels, And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels.

More from Alfred (Lord) Tennyson

  1. O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part, With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.
  2. Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife, When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life; Yearning for the …
  3. Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall, Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.
  4. Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new: That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do: For …
  5. Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
  6. So I triumphed ere my passion sweeping through me left me dry, Left with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye; Eye, to whi…
  7. I remember one that perish'd: sweetly did she speak and move: Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.
  8. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

All Alfred (Lord) Tennyson quotes