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,
Thy kingly intellect shall feed,
Until she be an athlete bold,
And weary with a fingers touch
Those writhed limbs of lightning speed;
Like that strange angel which of old,
Until the breaking of the light,
Wrestled with wandering Israel,
Past Yabbok brook the livelong night,
And heavens mazed signs stood still
In the dim tract of Penuel.

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

To One Who Ran Down The English

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

St. Telemachus

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

The Splender Falls

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Simple Poetry

A Medley: O Swallow (The Princess)

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.

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

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

Love And Duty

Of love that never found his earthly close,
What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts?
Or all the same as if he had not been?
Not so. Shall Error in the round of time
Still father Truth? O shall the braggart shout
For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself
Thro madness, hated by the wise, to law
System and empire? Sin itself be found
The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun?
And only he, this wonder, dead, become
Mere highway dust? or year by year alone
Sit brooding in the ruins of a life,
Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself!
If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all,
Better the narrow brain, the stony heart,
The staring eye glazed oer with sapless days,
The long mechanic pacings to and fro,
The set gray life, and apathetic end.
B...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

To E. Fitzgerald: Tiresias

Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange,
Where once I tarried for a while,
Glance at the wheeling orb of change,
And greet it with a kindly smile;
Whom yet I see as there you sit
Beneath your sheltering garden-tree,
And watch your doves about you flit,
And plant on shoulder, hand, and knee,
Or on your head their rosy feet,
As if they knew your diet spares
Whatever moved in that full sheet
Let down to Peter at his prayers;
Who live on milk and meal and grass;
And once for ten long weeks I tried
Your table of Pythagoras,
- And seem'd at first "a thing enskied,"
As Shakespeare has it, airy-light
To float above the ways of men,
Then fell from that half-spiritual height
Chill'd, till I tasted flesh again
One night when earth was winter-b]ack,

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Of Old Sat Freedom

Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starry lights:
She heard the torrents meet.

There in her place she did rejoice,
Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind,
But fragments of her mighty voice
Came rolling on the wind.

Then stept she down thro' town and field
To mingle with the human race,
And part by part to men reveal'd
The fullness of her face --

Grave mother of majestic works,
From her isle-alter gazing down,
Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks,
And, King-like, wears the crown:

Her open eyes desire the truth.
The wisdom of a thousand years
Is in them. May perpetual youth
Keep dry their light from tears;

That her fair form may stand and shine
Make bright ...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Tiresias

I wish I were as in the years of old
While yet the blessed daylight made itself
Ruddy thro both the roofs of sight, and woke
These eyes, now dull, but then so keen to seek
The meanings ambushd under all they saw,
The flight of birds, the flame of sacrifice,
What omens may foreshadow fate to man
And woman, and the secret of the Gods.
My son, the Gods, despite of human prayer,
Are slower to forgive than human kings.
The great God, Arês, burns in anger still
Against the guiltless heirs of him from Tyre
Our Cadmus, out of whom thou art, who found
Beside the springs of Dircê, smote, and stilld
Thro all its folds the multitudinous beast
The dragon, which our trembling fathers calld
The Gods own son.
A tale, that told to me,
When but thine age, by age...

Alfred Lord Tennyson