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.
And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewelled shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burned like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
And on her lover's arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold,
And far across the hills they went
In that new world which is the old:
Across the hills, and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
And deep into the dying day
The happy princess follow'd him.
More black than ash-buds in the front of March.
But we grow old. Ah! when shall all men's good
Be each man's rule, and universal Peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,
Thro' all the circle of the golden year?
Half light, half shade,
She stood, a sight to make an old man young.
The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above;
Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill,
He saw thro' his own soul.
The marvel of the everlasting will,
An open scroll,
Before him lay; with echoing feet he threaded
The secretest walks of fame:
The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed
And wing'd with flame,
Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue...
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
Come out, my lord, it is a world of fools. 22
Ambition
Is like the sea wave, which the more you drink
The more you thirst—yea—drink too much, as men
Have done on rafts of wreck—it drives you mad.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
For this is England's greatest son,
He that gained a hundred fights,
And never lost an English gun.
You that woo the Voices—tell them "Old Experience is a fool";
Teach your flattered kings that only those who can not read can rule.
Here and there a cotter's babe is royal—born by right divine;
Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine.
"If I'm a beggar born," she said
"I will speak out, for I dare not lie,
Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold,
And fling the diamond necklace by."
The song that nerves a nation's heart
Is in itself a deed.
Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet —
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
Follow you the star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine.
Forward, till you see the Highest Human Nature is divine.
O young Mariner,
You from the haven
Under the sea-cliff,
You that are watching
The gray Magician
With eyes of wonder,
I am Merlin,
And I am dying,
I am Merlin
Who follow The Gleam.
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.