Alfred Lord Tennyson Art Quotations

God made thee good as thou art beautiful.

We are ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times.

A life of nothing's nothing worth, From that first nothing ere his birth, To that last nothing under earth.

What was once to me mere matter of the fancy now has grown the vast necessity of heart and life.

As the husband is the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, As the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

Oh for someone with a heart, head and hand. Whatever they call them, what do I care, aristocrat, democrat, autocrat, just be it one that can rule and dare not lie.

Whate'er thy joys, they vanish with the day: Whate'er thy griefs, in sleep they fade away, To sleep! to sleep! Sleep, mournful heart, and let the past be past: Sleep, happy soul, all life will sleep at last.

But for the unquiet heart and brain A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise Like dull narcotics numbing pain.

I came in haste with cursing breath, And heart of hardest steel; But when I saw thee cold in death, I felt as man should feel. For when I look upon that face, That cold, unheeding, frigid brown, Where neither rage nor fear has place, By Heaven! I cannot hate thee now!

For always roaming with a hungry heart.

So I find every pleasant spot In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber, and the street, For all is dark where thou art not

Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hours will last.

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Once in a golden hour, I cast to earth a seed, And up there grew a flower, That others called a weed.

Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.

Sweet is true love though given in vain, in vain; And sweet is death who puts an end to pain: I know not which is sweeter, no, not I. Love, art thou sweet? then bitter death must be: Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me. O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die. ... I fain would follow love, if that could be; I needs must follow death, who calls for me; Call and I follow, I follow! let me die.

Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street, Doors, where my heart was used to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand, A hand that can be clasp'd no more - Behold me, for I cannot sleep, And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day.

A man had given all other bliss, And all his worldly worth for this To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips.

She sleeps: her breathings are not heard In palace chambers far apart. The fragrant tresses are not stirr'd That lie upon her charmed heart She sleeps: on either hand upswells The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest: She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells A perfect form in perfect rest.

The wind sounds like a silver wire, And from beyond the noon a fire Is pour'd upon the hills, and nigher The skies stoop down in their desire; And, isled in sudden seas of light, My heart, pierced thro' with fierce delight, Bursts into blossom in his sight.

For this alone on Death I wreak The wrath that garners in my heart: He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak.

Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be… And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

Tis not your work, but Love's. Love, unperceived, A more ideal Artist he than all, Came, drew your pencil from you, made those eyes Darker than the darkest pansies, and that hair More black than ashbuds in the front of March.

Virtue!--to be good and just-- Every heart, when sifted well, Is a clot of warmer dust, Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.

The passionate heart of the poet is whirled into folly and vice.

Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.

There is no land like England, Where'er the light of day be; There are no hearts like English hearts, Such hearts of oak as they be; There is no land like England, Where'er the light of day be: There are no men like Englishmen, So tall and bold as they be! And these will strike for England, And man and maid be free To foil and spoil the tyrant Beneath the greenwood tree.

With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.

The song that nerves a nation's heart is in itself a deed.

From yon blue heavens above us bent The gardener Adam and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.

To me He is all fault who hath no fault at all: For who loves me must have a touch of earth.

The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself.

Never, oh! never, nothing will die; The stream flows, The wind blows, The cloud fleets, The heart beats, Nothing will die.

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?

My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.

The parting of a husband and wife is like the cleaving of a heart; one half will flutter here, one there.

I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage, The linnet born within the cage, That never knew the summer woods: I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time, Unfetter’d by the sense of crime, To whom a conscience never wakes; Nor, what may count itself as blest, The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth; Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; ‘Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.

The world which credits what is done is cold to all that might have been.

A still small voice spake unto me, 'Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?

She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airy a tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthly bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red.

The still affection of the heart Became an outward breathing type, That into stillness past again, And left a want unknown before; Although the loss had brought us pain, That loss but made us love the more.

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

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

Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths; Love laps his wings on either side the heart Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts, So that they pass not to the shrine of sound.

Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land; Ring in the Christ that is to be.

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.