Quotes from Alfred Lord Tennyson

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

O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves,And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee.

Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.

Half a league, half a league,Half a league onward,All in the valley of deathRode the six hundred.

The great world's altar-stairs,That slope through darkness up to God.

I know that age to age succeeds,Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds,A dust of systems and of creeds.

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes.

Man is the hunter; woman is his game.

You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;Tomorrow 'ill be the happiest time of all the glad New Year;Of all the glad New Year, mother, the maddest, merriest day;For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May.

Cannon to right of them,Cannon to left of them,Cannon in front of themVolley'd and thunder'd.

Gorgonized me from head to foot,With a stony British stare.

Men at most differ as Heaven and Earth, but women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell.

Here at the quiet limit of the world.

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;Close to the sun in lonely lands,Ring'd with the azure world he stands.The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;He watches from his mountain walls,And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

The gardener Adam and his wifeSmile at the claims of long descent.

Bury the Great DukeWith an empire's lamentation.

And ah for a man to arise in me,That the man I am may cease to be!

Do we indeed desire the deadShould still be near us at our side?

Love is and was my lord and king.

The long mechanic pacings to and fro,The set gray life, and apathetic end.

Ah, whyShould life all labor be?

How fares it with the happy dead?

Many-tower'd Camelot.