Quotes
Quotes - Tennyson
For now the poet can not die,
Nor leave his music as of old,
But round him ere he scarce be cold
Begins the scandal and the cry.
But oh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
Mastering the lawless science of our law,--
That codeless myriad of precedent,
That wilderness of single instances.
Insipid as the queen upon a card.
Rich in saving common-sense,
And, as the greatest only are,
In his simplicity sublime.
Oh good gray head which all men knew!
That tower of strength
Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew.
For this is England's greatest son,
He that gained a hundred fights,
And never lost an English gun.
Not once or twice in our rough-island story
The path of duty was the way to glory.
All in the valley of death
Rode the six hundred.
Some one had blundered:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them.
.....
Into the jaws of death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies;
That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright;
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.
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!
So dear a life your arms enfold,
Whose crying is a cry for gold.
Read my little fable:
He that runs may read.
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed.
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
And sweet as English air could make her, she.
Jewels five-words-long,
That on the stretched forefinger of all Time
Sparkle forever.
Blow, bugle, blow! set the wild echoes flying!
Blow, bugle! answer, echoes! dying, dying, dying.
O Love! they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow! set the wild echoes flying!
And answer, echoes, answer! dying, dying, dying.
There sinks the nebulous star we call the sun.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Tears from the depth of some divine 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.
