Alfred Tennyson (Lord)
(August 6 1809 – October 6 1892) was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom after William Wordsworth and is one of the most popular English poets.
Insipid as the queen upon a card.
She with all the charm of woman,
She with all the breadth of man.
"I'll never love any but you," the morning song of the lark;
"I'll never love any but you," the nightingale's hymn in the dark.
Authors—essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part,
Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of art.
Friends,
I am only merry for an hour or two
Upon a birthday: if this life of ours
Be a good glad thing, why should we make us merry
Because a year of it is gone? but Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come
Whispering 'It will be happier;' and old faces
Press round us, and warm hands close with warm hands,
And thro' the blood the wine leaps to the brain
Like April sap to the topmost tree, that shoots
New buds to heaven, whereon the throstle rock'd
Sings a new song to the new year — and you,
Strike up a song, my friends, and then to bed.
My lord, you know what Virgil sings—
Woman is various and most mutable. 21
Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool.
Once at the croak of a Raven who crost it,
A barbarous people,
Blind to the magic,
And deaf to the melody,
Snarl’d at and cursed me.
A demon vext me,
The light retreated,
The landskip darken’d,
The melody deaden’d,
The Master whisper’d
‘Follow The Gleam.’
A princelier-looking man never stept thro' a prince's hall.
Slav, Teuton, Kelt, I count them all
My friends and brother souls,
With all the peoples, great and small,
That wheel between the poles.
O Love! what hours were thine and mine,
In lands of palm and southern pine;
In lands of palm, of orange-blossom,
Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine!
Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.
The great brand
Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch,
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock
By night, with noises of the northern sea.
So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur.
We are ancients of the earth,
And in the morning of the times.
To do him any wrong was to beget
A kindness from him, for his heart was rich—
Of such fine mould that if you sowed therein
The seed of Hate, it blossomed Charity.
Meet is it changes should control
Our being, lest we rust in ease.
We all are changed by still degrees,
All but the basis of the soul.
This laurel greener from the brows
Of him that utter'd nothing base.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Of me you shall not win renown:
You thought to break a country heart
For pastime, ere you went to town.
At me you smiled, but unbeguiled
I saw the snare, and I retired;
The daughter of a hundred earls,
You are not one to be desired.
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.
As she fled fast through sun and shade
The happy winds upon her played,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid.