18 Alfred (Lord) Tennyson Quotes on Memory

Alfred (Lord) Tennyson quotes on memory

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.

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 -

24. Break, break, break At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

43. Thou who stealest fire, From the fountains of the past, To glorify the present; oh, haste, Visit my low desire! Strengthen me, enlighten me! I faint in this obscurity, Thou dewy dawn of memory.

45. Come forth I charge thee, arise, Thou of the many tongues, the myriad eyes! Thou comest not with shows of flaunting vines Unto mine inner eye, Divinest Memory!

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.

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.

65. 'But, if I lapsed from nobler place, Some legend of a fallen race Alone might hint of my disgrace; 'Some vague emotion of delight In gazing up an Alpine height, Some yearning toward the lamps of night. 'Or if thro' lower lives I came - Tho' all experience past became Consolidate in mind and frame - 'I might forget my weaker lot; For is not our first year forgot? The haunts of memory echo not. 'And men, whose reason long was blind, From cells of madness unconfined, Oft lose whole years of darker mind. 'Much more, if first I floated free, As naked essence, must I be Incompetent of memory: 'For memory dealing but with time, And he with matter, could she climb Beyond her own material prime?

94. 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.

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

111. I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.

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.

134. Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.

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.

147. Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

148. Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned 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!

178. The news came to the village - the dire news which spread across the land, filling men's hearts with consternation - that Byron was dead. Tennyson was then about a boy of fifteen. 'Byron was dead! I thought the whole world was at an end,' he once said, speaking of those bygone days. 'I thought everything was over and finished for everyone - that nothing else mattered. I remembered I walked out alone, and carved 'Byron is dead' into the sandstone.'