Idylls of the King

“Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayerThan this world dreams of: Wherefore, let thy voice,Rise like a fountain for me night and day.””

— Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson

“I fain would follow love, if that could be; I needs must follow death, who calls for me; Call and I follow, I follow! let me die.””

— Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson

“This madness has come on us for our sins.””

— Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson

“While he gazedThe beauty of her flesh abashed the boy,As though it were the beauty of her soul:For as the base man, judging of the good,Puts his own baseness in him by defaultOf will and nature, so did Pelleas lendAll the young beauty of his own soul to hers””

— Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson

“In her right hand the lily, in her leftThe letter--all her bright hair streaming down--And all the coverlid was cloth of goldDrawn to her waist, and she herself in whiteAll but her face, and that clear-featured faceWas lovely, for she did not seem as dead,But fast asleep, and lay as though she smiled.””

— Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson

“I know not if I know what true love is,But if I know, then, if I love not him,I know there is none other I can love””

— Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson

“And Gareth bowed himself with all obedience to the King, and wroughtAll kind of service with a noble easeThat graced the lowliest act in doing it.””

— Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson

“And while he waited in the castle court,The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rangClear through the open casement of the hall,Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird,Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,Moves him to think what kind of bird it isThat sings so delicately clear, and makeConjecture of the plumage and the form;So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;And made him like a man abroad at mornWhen first the liquid note beloved of menComes flying over many a windy waveTo Britain, and in April suddenlyBreaks from a coppice gemmed with green and red,And he suspends his converse with a friend,Or it may be the labour of his hands,To think or say, 'There is the nightingale;'So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,'Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me.””

— Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson

“Ah my God, what might I not have made of thy fair world, had I but loved thy highest creature here? It was my duty to have loved the highest: It surely was my profit had I known: It would have been my pleasure had I seen. We needs must love the highest when we see it, Not Lancelot, nor another.””

— Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson