Beautiful City

Beautiful city, the centre and crater of European confusion,
O you with your passionate shriek for the rights of an equal
humanity,
How often your Re-volution has proven but E-volution
Rolld again back on itself in the tides of a civic insanity!

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson was a renowned British poet of the Victorian era, born on August 6, 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire. He is best known for his works like 'In Memoriam A.H.H.', 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', and 'Ulysses'. As one of the most popular poets of his time, he was appointed Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland in 1850. Tennyson's poetry is characterized by its rich imagery, deep emotion, and classical themes. He passed away on October 6, 1892.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Merman

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

A Medley: Thy Voice Is Heard (The Princess)

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

Love And Death

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

To The Duke Of Argyll

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Freedom

I.

O thou so fair in summers gone,
While yet thy fresh and virgin soul
Informd the pillard Parthenon,
The glittering Capitol;



II.

So fair in southern sunshine bathed,
But scarce of such majestic mien
As here with forehead vapor-swathed
In meadows ever green;



III.

For thouwhen Athens reignd and Rome,
Thy glorious eyes were dimmd with pain
To mark in many a freemans home
The slave, the scourge, the chain;



IV.

O follower of the Vision, still
In motion to the distant gleam
Howeer blind force and brainless will
May jar thy golden dream



V.

Of Knowledge fusing class with class,
Of civic Hate no more to be,
Of Love to leaven a...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Hymn Of The City.

Not in the solitude
Alone may man commune with Heaven, or see
Only in savage wood
And sunny vale, the present Deity;
Or only hear his voice
Where the winds whisper and the waves rejoice.

Even here do I behold
Thy steps, Almighty! here, amidst the crowd,
Through the great city rolled,
With everlasting murmur deep and loud,
Choking the ways that wind
'Mongst the proud piles, the work of human kind.

Thy golden sunshine comes
From the round heaven, and on their dwellings lies,
And lights their inner homes;
For them thou fill'st with air the unbounded skies,
And givest them the stores
Of ocean, and the harvests of its shores.

Thy Spirit is around,
Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along;
And this eternal sound,
Voic...

William Cullen Bryant

The Beautiful City

The Beautiful City! Forever
Its rapturous praises resound;
We fain would behold it - but never
A glimpse of its dory is found:
We slacken our lips at the tender
White breasts of our mothers to hear
Of its marvellous beauty and splendor;
We see - but the gleam of a tear!

Yet never the story may tire us -
First graven in symbols of stone -
Rewritten on scrolls of papyrus
And parchment, and scattered and blown
By the winds of the tongues of all nations,
Like a litter of leaves wildly whirled
Down the rack of a hundred translations,
From the earliest lisp of the world.

We compass the earth and the ocean,
From the Orient's uttermost light,
To where the last ripple in motion
Lips hem of the skirt of the night,
But the Beautiful City e...

James Whitcomb Riley

Urbs Sacra Aeterna

Rome! what a scroll of History thine has been;
In the first days thy sword republican
Ruled the whole world for many an age's span:
Then of the peoples wert thou royal Queen,
Till in thy streets the bearded Goth was seen;
And now upon thy walls the breezes fan
(Ah, city crowned by God, discrowned by man!)
The hated flag of red and white and green.
When was thy glory! when in search for power
Thine eagles flew to greet the double sun,
And the wild nations shuddered at thy rod?
Nay, but thy glory tarried for this hour,
When pilgrims kneel before the Holy One,
The prisoned shepherd of the Church of God.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

The Fall Of Jerusalem

Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
Thou art low! thou mighty one,
How is the brilliance of thy diadem,
How is the lustre of thy throne
Rent from thee, and thy sun of fame
Darkend by the shadowy pinion
Of the Roman bird, whose sway
All the tribes of earth obey,
Crouching neath his dread dominion,
And the terrors of his name!

How is thy royal seatwhereon
Sate in days of yore
Lowly Jesses godlike son,
And the strength of Solomon,
In those rich and happy times
When the ships from Tarshish bore
Incense, and from Ophirs land,
With silken sail and cedar oar,
Wafting to Judeas strand
All the wealth of foreign climes
How is thy royal seat oerthrown!
Gone is all thy majesty:
Salem! Salem! city of kings,
Thou sittest desolate and lone,...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

A Strong City

For them that hope in Thee.... Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy face, from the disturbance of men.

Thou shalt protect them in Thy tabernacle from the contradiction of tongues.

Blessed be the Lord, for He hath shewn His wonderful mercy to me in a fortified city. - Psalm xxx.


Beauty and splendor were on every hand:
Yet strangely crawled dark shadows down the lanes,
Twisting across the fields, like dragon-shapes
That smote the air with blackness, and devoured
The life of light, and choked the smiling world
Till it grew livid with a sudden age -
The death of hope.

        O squandered happiness;
Vain dust of misery powdering life's fresh flower!
The sky was holy, but the earth was not.

Men ruled, but ruled in vain; since wretch...

George Parsons Lathrop