28 Alfred (Lord) Tennyson Quotes on Life

Alfred (Lord) Tennyson quotes on life

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.

6. Have I not found a happy earth? I least should breathe a thought of pain. Would God renew me from my birth I'd almost live my life again. So sweet it seems with thee to walk, And once again to woo thee mine - It seems in after-dinner talk Across the walnuts and the wine -

9. I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house, Wherein at ease for aye to dwell. I said, 'O Soul, make merry and carouse, Dear soul, for all is well.'

15. Of love that never found his earthly close, What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts? Or all the same as if he had not been? Not so. Shall Error in the round of time Still father Truth? O shall the braggart shout For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself Thro' madness, hated by the wise, to law System and empire? Sin itself be found The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun? And only he, this wonder, dead, become Mere highway dust? or year by year alone Sit brooding in the ruins of a life, Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself! If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all, Better the narrow brain, the stony heart, The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless days, The long mechanic pacings to and fro, The set gray life, and apathetic end. But am I not the nobler thro' thy love? O three times less unworthy! likewise thou Art more thro' Love, and greater than thy years.

27. I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley.

28. And draw them all along, and flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.

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.

51. A still small voice spake unto me, 'Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?' Then to the still small voice I said; 'Let me not cast in endless shade What is so wonderfully made.'

53. I said, 'The years with change advance: If I make dark my countenance, I shut my life from happier chance.

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.'

56. 'Nay - rather yet that I could raise One hope that warm'd me in the days While still I yearn'd for human praise. 'When, wide in soul, and bold of tongue, Among the tents I paused and sung, The distant battle flash'd and rung. 'I sung the joyful Paean clear, And, sitting, burnish'd without fear The brand, the buckler, and the spear - 'Waiting to strive a happy strife, To war with falsehood to the knife, And not to lose the good of life - 'Some hidden principle to move, To put together, part and prove, And mete the bounds of hate and love - 'As far as might be, to carve out Free space for every human doubt, That the whole mind might orb about - 'To search thro' all I felt or saw, The springs of life, the depths of awe, And reach the law within the law: 'At least, not rotting like a weed, But, having sown some generous seed, Fruitful of further thought and deed, 'To pass, when Life her light withdraws, Not void of righteous self-applause, Nor in a merely selfish cause - 'In some good cause, not in mine own, To perish, wept for, honour'd, known, And like a warrior overthrown...

57. 'Yea!' said the voice, 'thy dream was good, While thou abodest in the bud. It was the stirring of the blood. 'If Nature put not forth her power About the opening of the flower, Who is it that could live an hour? 'Then comes the check, the change, the fall. Pain rises up, old pleasures pall. There is one remedy for all. 'Yet hadst thou, thro' enduring pain, Link'd month to month with such a chain Of knitted purport, all were vain. 'Thou hadst not between death and birth Dissolved the riddle of the earth. So were thy labour little worth.

61. I said, 'I toil beneath the curse, But, knowing not the universe, I fear to slide from bad to worse. 'And that, in seeking to undo One riddle, and to find the true, I knit a hundred others new: 'Or that this anguish fleeting hence, Unmanacled from bonds of sense, Be fix'd and froz'n to permanence: 'For I go, weak from suffering here; Naked I go, and void of cheer: What is it that I may not fear?'

64. 'Yet how should I for certain hold, Because my memory is so cold, That I first was in human mould? 'I cannot make this matter plain, But I would shoot, howe'er in vain, A random arrow from the brain. 'It may be that no life is found, Which only to one engine bound Falls off, but cycles always round. 'As old mythologies relate, Some draught of Lethe might await The slipping thro' from state to state. 'As here we find in trances, men Forget the dream that happens then, Until they fall in trance again. 'So might we, if our state were such As one before, remember much, For those two likes might meet and touch.

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.

81. Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.

82. Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

95. Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

99. 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 large excitement that the coming years would yield, Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field

102. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

110. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

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.

114. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks; The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die.

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.

141. Ask me no more: thy fate and mine are seal'd: I strove against the stream and all in vain: Let the great river take me to the main: No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield; Ask me no more.

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.

177. The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.