Alfred Tennyson

His deeds yet live, the worst is yet to come. Yet let your sleep for this one night be sound: I do forgive him!

Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan.

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.

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

We love not this French God, the child of hell, Wild War, who breaks the converse of the wise; But though we love kind Peace so well, We dare not even by silence sanction lies. It might be safe our censures to withdraw, And yet, my Lords, …

He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.

But oh for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

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.

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

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

As shines the moon in clouded skies, She in her poor attire was seen; One praised her ankles, one her eyes, One her dark hair and lovesome mien. So sweet a face, such angel grace, In all that land had never been.

I grow in worth, and wit, and sense, Unboding critic-pen, Or that eternal want of pence, Which vexes public men, Who hold their hands to all, and cry For that which all deny them —

My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure.

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?

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.

The trance gave way To those caresses, when a hundred times In that last kiss, which never was the last, Farewell, like endless welcome, lived and died.

But am I not the nobler thro' thy love? O three times less unworthy! likewise thou Art more thro' Love, and greater than thy years.

Of love that never found his earthly close, What sequel?

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

At length I saw a lady within call, Stiller than chisell'd marble, standing there; A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely fair.

Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath Preluded those melodious bursts that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still.

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 …

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."

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power. Yet not for power (power of herself Would come uncall'd for) but to live by law, Acting the law we live by without fear; And, because right is …