To...

I send you here a sort of allegory
For you will understand itof a soul,
A sinful soul possessd of many gifts,
A spacious garden full of flowering weeds,
A glorious devil, large in heart and brain,
That did love beauty onlybeauty seen
In all varieties of mould and mind
And knowledge for its beauty; or if good,
Good only for its beauty, seeing not
That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters
That doat upon each other, friends to man,
Living together under the same roof,
And never can be sunderd without tears.
And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be
Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie
Howling in outer darkness. Not for this
Was common clay taen from the common earth
Moulded by God, and temperd with the tears
Of angels to the perfect shape of man.

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 Epic

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

Of Old Sat Freedom

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

Epitaph On General Gordon

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

The Blackbird

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.

To...

I.

Clear-headed friend, whose joyful scorn,
Edged with sharp laughter, cuts atwain
The knots that tangle human creeds,
The wounding cords that bind and strain
The heart until it bleeds,
Ray-fringed eyelids of the morn
Roof not a glance so keen as thine;
If aught of prophecy be mine,
Thou wilt not live in vain.


II.

Low-cowering shall the Sophist sit;
Falsehood shall bare her plaited brow;
Fair-fronted Truth shall droop not now
With shrilling shafts of subtle wit.
Nor martyr-flames, nor trenchant swords
Can do away that ancient lie;
A gentler death shall Falsehood die,
Shot thro and thro with cunning words.



III.

Weak Truth a-leaning on her crutch,
Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need,

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Love

I.

Thou, from the first, unborn, undying Love,
Albeit we gaze not on thy glories near,
Before the face of God didst breathe and move,
Though night and pain and rain and death reign here.
Thou foldest, like a golden atmosphere,
The very throne of the eternal God;
Passing through thee the edicts of his fear
Are mellowed into music, borne abroad
By the loud winds, though they uprend the sea,
Even from its central deeps: thine empery
Is over all; thou wilt not brook eclipse;
Thou goest and returnest to His leeps
Like lightning: thou dost ever brood above
The silence of all hearts, unutterable Love.


II.

To know thee is all wisdom, and old age
Is but to know thee: dimly we behold thee
Athwart the veils of evils which infold thee.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Friendship

O thou most holy Friendship! wheresoeer
Thy dwelling befor in the courts of man
But seldom thine all-heavenly voice we hear,
Sweetning the moments of our narrow span;
And seldom thy bright foot-steps do we scan
Along the weary waste of life unblest,
For faithless is its frail and wayward plan,
And perfidy is mans eternal guest,
With dark suspicion linkd and shameless interest!


Tis thine, when life has reachd its final goal,
Ere the last sigh that frees the mind be givn,
To speak sweet solace to the parting soul,
And pave the bitter path that leads to heavn:
Tis thine, wheneer the heart is rackd and rivn
By the hot shafts of baleful calumny,
When the dark spirit to despair is drivn,
To teach its lonely grief to lean on thee,
And ...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Supposed Confessions Of A Second-Rate Sensitive Mind

O God! my God! have mercy now.
I faint, I fall. Men say that Thou
Didst die for me, for such as me,
Patient of ill, and death, and scorn,
And that my sin was as a thorn
Among the thorns that girt Thy brow,
Wounding Thy soul.That even now,
In this extremest misery
Of ignorance, I should require
A sign! and if a bolt of fire
Would rive the slumbrous summer noon
While I do pray to Thee alone,
Think my belief would stronger grow!
Is not my human pride brought low?
The boastings of my spirit still?
The joy I had in my free-will
All cold, and dead, and corpse-like grown?
And what is left to me but Thou,
And faith in Thee? Men pass me by;
Christians with happy countenances
And children all seem full of Thee!
And women smile with saint-like ...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

A Character

With a half-glance upon the sky
At night he said, The wanderings
Of this most intricate Universe
Teach me the nothingness of things.
Yet could not all creation pierce
Beyond the bottom of his eye.

He spake of beauty: that the dull
Saw no divinity in grass,
Life in dead stones, or spirit in air;
Then looking as twere in a glass,
He smoothd his chin and sleekd his hair,
And said the earth was beautiful.

He spake of virtue: not the gods
More purely, when they wish to charm
Pallas and Juno sitting by:
And with a sweeping of the arm,
And a lack-lustre dead-blue eye,
Devolved his rounded periods.

Most delicately hour by hour
He canvassd human mysteries,
And trod on silk, as if the winds
Blew his own praises in his eye...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Poets Mind

I.

Vex not thou the poets mind
With thy shallow wit;
Vex not thou the poets mind,
For thou canst not fathom it.
Clear and bright it should be ever,
Flowing like a crystal river,
Bright as light, and clear as wind.


II.

Dark-browd sophist, come not anear;
All the place is holy ground;
Hollow smile and frozen sneer
Come not here.
Holy water will I pour
Into every spicy flower
Of the laurel-shrubs that hedge it around.
The flowers would faint at your cruel cheer.
In your eye there is death,
There is frost in your breath
Which would blight the plants.
Where you stand you cannot hear
From the groves within
The wild-birds din.
In the heart of the garden the merry bird chants.
It would fall to the gro...

Alfred Lord Tennyson