The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (428 page)
Read The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Online
Authors: Elizabeth Knowles
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more.
Maud
(1855) pt. 1, sect. 2
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone.
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the rose is blown.
Maud
(1855) pt. 1, sect. 22, st. 1
Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls.
Maud
(1855) pt. 1, sect. 22, st. 9
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"
And the white rose weeps, "She is late."
Maud
(1855) pt. 1, sect. 22, st. 10
She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed.
Maud
(1855) pt. 1, sect. 22, st. 11
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.
"The May Queen" (1832)
After it, follow it,
Follow The Gleam.
"Merlin and The Gleam" (1889) st. 9
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages.
"Milton: Alcaics" (1863)
The last great Englishman is low.
"Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" (1852) st. 3
That world-earthquake, Waterloo!
"Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" (1852) st. 6
Who never sold the truth to serve the hour,
Nor paltered with Eternal God for power.
"Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" (1852) st. 7
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.
The Princess
(1847) "Prologue" l. 141
And blessings on the falling out
That all the more endears,
When we fall out with those we love
And kiss again with tears!
The Princess
(1847) pt. 2, song (added 1850)
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
The Princess
(1847) pt. 3, song (added 1850)
The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
The Princess
(1847) pt. 4, song (added 1850)
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
The Princess
(1847) pt. 4, song (added 1850)
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.
The Princess
(1847) pt. 4, l. 21, song (added 1850)
Dear as remembered kisses after death.
The Princess
(1847) pt. 4, l. 36, song (added 1850)
O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
And dark and true and tender is the North.
The Princess
(1847) pt. 4, l. 78, song (added 1850)
Man is the hunter; woman is his game.
The Princess
(1847) pt. 5, l. 147
Home they brought her warrior dead.
She nor swooned, nor uttered cry:
All her maidens, watching said,
"She must weep or she will die."
The Princess
(1847) pt. 6, song (added 1850)
Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee.
The Princess
(1847) pt. 6, song (added 1850)
Like summer tempest came her tears.
The Princess
(1847) pt. 6, song (added 1850)
Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk.
The Princess
(1847) pt. 7, l. 161, song (added 1850)
Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
The Princess
(1847) pt. 7, l. 167, song (added 1850)
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.
The Princess
(1847) pt. 7, l. 171, song (added 1850)
Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height?
The Princess
(1847) pt. 7, l. 177, song (added 1850)
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him.
The Princess
(1847) pt. 7, l. 184, song (added 1850)
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
The Princess
(1847) pt. 7, l. 206, song (added 1850)
No little lily-handed baronet he.
The Princess
(1847) "Conclusion" l. 84
At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay.
"The Revenge" (1878) st. 1
And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,
But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.
"The Revenge" (1878) st. 9
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner—sink her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!
"The Revenge" (1878) st. 11
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
"Sir Galahad" (1842)
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.
"Song—The Owl" (1830)
The gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.
"Tithonus" (1860, revised 1864) l. 52
All the charm of all the Muses
often flowering in a lonely word.
"To Virgil" (1882) st. 3
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race.
"Ulysses" (1842) l. 1
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
"Ulysses" (1842) l. 18
This is my son, mine own Telemachus.
"Ulysses" (1842) l. 33
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
"Ulysses" (1842) l. 58
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
"Ulysses" (1842) l. 69
That which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
"Ulysses" (1842) l. 74
Every moment dies a man,
Every moment one is born.
"The Vision of Sin" (1842) pt. 4, st. 9.
In the end I accepted the honour, because during dinner Venables told me, that, if I became Poet Laureate, I should always when I dined out be offered the liver-wing of a fowl.
on being made Poet Laureate in 1850
in
Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by his Son
(1897) vol. 1
It is the height of luxury to sit in a hot bath and read about little birds.
having had running hot water installed in his new house
Hallam Tennyson
Tennyson and his Friends
(1911)
A louse in the locks of literature.
of Churton Collins
Evan Charteris
Life and Letters of Sir Edmund Gosse
(1931) ch. 14
c.
190
bc
Hinc illae lacrimae.Hence those tears.
Andria
l. 126
I am a man, I count nothing human foreign to me.
Heauton Timorumenos
l. 77
Fortis fortuna adiuvat.Fortune assists the brave.
Phormio
l. 203.
Quot homines tot sententiae: suus cuique mos.There are as many opinions as there are people: each has his own correct way.
Phormio
l. 454