Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"Yet fill my glass: give me one kiss: My own sweet Alice, we must die. Theres somewhat in this world amiss Shall be unriddled by and by. Theres somewhat flows to us in life, But more is taken quite away. Pray, Alice, pray, my darling wife, That we may die the self-same day."

"With blackest moss the flower plots Were thickly crusted, one and all; The rusted nails fell from the knots That held the pear to the gable wall. The broken sheds looked sad and strange: Unlifted was the clinking latch; Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. She only said, "My life is dreary, He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!"

"I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house, Wherein at ease for aye to dwell. I said, "O Soul, make merry and carouse, Dear soul, for all is well.""

"Half light, half shade, She stood, a sight to make an old man young."

"All the windy ways of men Are but dust that rises up, And is lightly laid again."

"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."

"But we grow old. Ah! when shall all mens good Be each mans 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?"

"The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world, A white-haird shadow roaming like a dream The ever-silent spaces of the East, Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn."

"Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower — but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is."

"Then some one spake: "Behold! it was a crime Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time." Another said: "The crime of sense became The crime of malice, and is equal blame." And one: "He had not wholly quenchd his power; A little grain of conscience made him sour." At last I heard a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?" To which an answer peald from that high land, But in a tongue no man could understand; And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn God made Himself an awful rose of dawn."

"I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley."

"The song that nerves a nations heart Is in itself a deed."