4 Alfred (Lord) Tennyson Quotes on Meaning

Alfred (Lord) Tennyson quotes on meaning

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.

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.

109. It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

120. So, Lady Flora, take my lay, And if you find no moral there, Go, look in any glass and say, What moral is in being fair. Oh, to what uses shall we put The wildweed-flower that simply blows? And is there any moral shut Within the bosom of the rose?