Alfred, Lord Tennyson Quotes

“Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death.”

“Can calm despair and wild unrest Be tenants of a single breast?”

“Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.”

“I hold it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things.”

“Yet less of sorrow lives in me For days of happy commune dead; Less yearning for the friendship fled, Than some strong bond which is to be.”

“And gazing on thee, sullen tree, Sick for thy stubborn hardihood.”

“For words, like Nature, half reveal and half conceal the Soul within.”

“Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life”

“That loss is common would not make My own less bitter, rather more: Too common! Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break.”

“My lighter moods are like to these, That out of words a comfort win; But there are other griefs within, And tears that at their fountain freeze;”

“Till at the last arose the man; Who throve and branch’d from clime to clime.”

“And all at once it seem’d at last The living soul was flashed on mine.”

“I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world’s altar-stairs That slope thro’ darkness up to God, I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all, And faintly trust the larger hope.”

“My own dim life should teach me this, That life shall live for evermore, Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is.”

“Thou seemest human and divine.”

“O Sorrow, cruel fellowship O Priestess in the vaults of Death”

“Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove;”

“In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold: But that large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more.”

“Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill. ”

“I watch thee from the quiet shore; Thy spirit up to mine can reach; But in dear words of human speech We two communicate no more.”