24 Alfred (Lord) Tennyson Quotes on Death

Alfred (Lord) Tennyson quotes on death

3. Where Claribel low-lieth The breezes pause and die, Letting the rose-leaves fall: But the solemn oak-tree sigheth, Thick-leaved, ambrosial, With an ancient melody Of an inward agony, Where Claribel low-lieth.

4. 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 looked 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 dreary, He cometh not,' she said; She said, 'I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!'

5. Yet fill my glass: give me one kiss: My own sweet Alice, we must die. There's somewhat in this world amiss Shall be unriddled by and by. There's somewhat flows to us in life, But more is taken quite away. Pray, Alice, pray, my darling wife, That we may die the self-same day.

29. The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world, A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream The ever-silent spaces of the East, Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.

54. I wept, 'Tho' I should die, I know That all about the thorn will blow In tufts of rosy-tinted snow; 'And men, thro' novel spheres of thought Still moving after truth long sought, Will learn new things when I am not.'

55. 'Do men love thee? Art thou so bound To men, that how thy name may sound Will vex thee lying underground? 'The memory of the wither'd leaf In endless time is scarce more brief Than of the garner'd Autumn-sheaf.

62. 'If all be dark, vague voice,' I said, 'These things are wrapt in doubt and dread, Nor canst thou show the dead are dead. 'The sap dries up: the plant declines. A deeper tale my heart divines. Know I not Death? the outward signs? 'I found him when my years were few; A shadow on the graves I knew, And darkness in the village yew.

63. 'Why, if man rot in dreamless ease, Should that plain fact, as taught by these, Not make him sure that he shall cease? 'Who forged that other influence, That heat of inward evidence, By which he doubts against the sense? 'He owns the fatal gift of eyes, That read his spirit blindly wise, Not simple as a thing that dies. 'Here sits he shaping wings to fly: His heart forebodes a mystery: He names the name Eternity. 'That type of Perfect in his mind In Nature can he nowhere find. He sows himself in every wind. 'He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend, And thro' thick veils to apprehend A labour working to an end. 'The end and the beginning vex His reason: many things perplex, With motions, checks, and counterchecks. 'He knows a baseness in his blood At such strange war with something good, He may not do the thing he would. 'Heaven opens inward, chasms yawn. Vast images in glimmering dawn, Half shown, are broken and withdrawn. 'Ah! sure within him and without, Could his dark wisdom find it out, There must be answer to his doubt.

68. 'Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly long'd for death. ''Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want.'

80. Death is the end of life; ah, why Should life all labour be? Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last? All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave? All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave In silence; ripen, fall and cease: Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

88. Lying, robed in snowy white That loosely flew to left and right - The leaves upon her falling light - Thro' the noises of the night, She floated down to Camelot: And as the boat-head wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her singing her last song, The Lady of Shalott. Heard a carol, mournful, holy, Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her blood was frozen slowly, And her eyes were darkened wholly, Turn'd to tower'd Camelot. For ere she reach'd upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died, The Lady of Shalott.

93. Never, tho' my mortal summers to such length of years should come As the many-winter'd crow that leads the clanging rookery home.

112. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breath were life. Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

115. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are - One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

118. O eyes long laid in happy sleep! O happy sleep, that lightly fled! O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep! O love, thy kiss would wake the dead!

133. O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow for ever and for ever.

135. Dear as remember'd kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

149. Bury the Great Duke With an empire's lamentation; Let us bury the Great Duke To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation; Mourning when their leaders fall, Warriors carry the warrior's pall, And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.

150. Lead out the pageant: sad and slow, As fits an universal woe, Let the long, long procession go, And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow, And let the mournful martial music blow; The last great Englishman is low.

153. Speak no more of his renown, Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him, God accept him, Christ receive him!

154. Half a league half a league Half a league onward All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred: 'Forward the Light Brigade Charge for the guns' he said Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

166. 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 red.

174. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark.

175. For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.