Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems

by Alfred Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson is among the most beloved English poets of all time. This edition of his selected poems includes classics like:
� "The Lady of Shalott"
� "Charge of the Light Brigade"
� "Maud"
� "Morte d'Arthur"
� "Ulysses"
� "The Lotus Eaters"

Elegantly packaged with a ribbon marker, this volume is the perfect addition to any poetry library.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, British Literature, 19th Century

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Works, including In Memoriam in 1850 and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" in 1854, of Alfred Tennyson, first baron, known as lord, appointed British poet laureate in 1850, reflect Victorian sentiments and aesthetics.

Elizabeth Tennyson, wife, bore Alfred Tennyson, the fourth of twelve children, to George Tennyson, clergyman; he inevitably wrote his books. In 1816, parents sent Tennyson was sent to grammar school of Louth.

Alfred Tennyson disliked school so intensely that from 1820, home educated him. At the age of 18 years in 1827, Alfred joined his two brothers at Trinity College, Cambridge and with Charles Tennyson, his brother, published Poems by Two Brothers , his book, in the same year.

Alfred Tennyson published Poems Chiefly Lyrical , his second book, in 1830. In 1833, Arthur Henry Hallam, best friend of Tennyson, engaged to wed his sister, died, and thus inspired some best Ulysses and the Passing of Arthur .

Following William Wordsworth, Alfred Tennyson in 1850 married Emily Sellwood Tenyson, his childhood friend. She bore Hallam Tennyson in 1852 and Lionel Tennyson in 1854, two years later.

Alfred Tennyson continued throughout his life and in the 1870s also to write a number of plays.

In 1884, the queen raised Alfred Tennyson, a great favorite of Albert, prince, thereafter to the peerage of Aldworth. She granted such a high rank for solely literary distinction to this only Englishman.

Alfred Tennyson died at the age of 83 years, and people buried his body in abbey of Westminster.

Reviews

[Jonathan Terrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

For even and morn
Ever will be
Thro' eternity.
Nothing was born;
Nothing will die;
All things will change.

- Nothing Will Die

Lord Alfred Tennyson was a poet of the highest calibre, a man who almost made the myths of poets being descended from the gods a reality. His poetry, as it stands, is both in a class of its own and part of the grand literature of his era (the mid 1800s). It is radiant, moral, mythological and artistic poetry. T.S. Eliot certainly gets it correct when he states that the three qualities possessed by the greatest poets such as Tennyson are "abundance, variety and complete competence." Because Tennyson himself fits all those aspects.

Tennyson's more famous poems are to be found in this volume: The Lotos Eaters, The Kraken, Ulysses, The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Lady of Shalott to name most of them. Yet it is also in his lesser known poems that Tennyson shines. These poems include such titles as: The Poet's Mind, All Things Will Die, The Palace of Art and The Two Voices. A comparison of all these poems reveals some of the key ideas connected to most of Tennyson's poetry. Firstly, Tennyson believes in evoking the power of emotion through an artistic, romantic depiction of nature or the environment. His poetry is all centred around key embodiments of nature, each of which has a particular emotion connected to them. It may be the glorious fields of battle, tinged with melancholy. It may be the old, weathered hills covered in nostalgia. It may even be the soft, coloured petals of trees in spring and their lovely bliss. However Tennyson chooses to work his magic he always seems to aim to weave together nature and beauty, nature and the soul.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

- The Charge of the Light Brigade

There are some religious themes to Tennyson's poetry, in that he is concerned with universal themes of life, death, love and war - themes of eternity and mortality. This is perhaps why Tennyson often seems to rely upon popular myths and legends in his poems, using them to describe other ideals. For instance many believe The Lady of Shalott to be about the poet's condition; Ulysses uses the popular tale of The Odyssey to refer to the process of aging and the loss of power; and The Kraken is again a symbol for death, aging and power. In fact, a great theme of Tennyson's appears to be the loss of power and majesty. One could almost assume he is referring to the loss of Great Britain's imperial nobility that it once possessed in history. Or perhaps he instead criticises how one can be caught up by the grandeur of a noble past and so not look to the future.

There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the later fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angel to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

- The Kraken

Tennyson was remarkable in his sheer range of depth. He wrote elegiac poetry, sonnets, narrative poems and a variety of other rhythmic verses. It seems the only poetic forms he did not attempt were that of free verse or the haiku, as his poetry is all remarkably tight and constrained while being free with its expression. His poetry is rather remarkable in how tight, yet how unexplainably free it is at the same time.

Poetry, in many ways is the simplest form of language. Not in that it abolishes all grammatical forms and values. Poetry certainly has its own internal structures, vocabulary and syntax. However, poetry is language taken back to the simple ideals and values of communication with rhythm. It is language taken to a point where one can speak truly without the need of long, complicated sentences. Tennyson shows in these poems that he is the master of being able to use poetry's honest simplicity for these very purposes and it is for this reason that he deserves a place among the great poetic pantheon.

For even and morn
Ye will never see
Thro' eternity.
All things were born.
Ye will come never more,
For all things must die.

- All Things Will Die

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't expect to like this as much as I did. I thought, Tennyson... isn't that some old fuddy duddy, a damn poet laureate for cryin' out loud, all patriotic and old old old... I didn't even know from what period he was before I read this, I thought he was 18th Century, not 19th... I'm so ignorant. Anyway, what I really liked about these poems is that they're not that hard to understand. He uses fairly ordinary words and allusions but then the way he makes it all fit together is really cool. Like bad-ass meter and rhymes that are fun to memorize and repeat and then actually make sense. I mean, Robert Frost, right... his poems are relatively easy to understand, or at least they seem to be, and they flow along and all that, but Tennyson can do that kind of thing and also have real passion... good stories with high stakes and action, not some damn farmer watching the snow fall. Although there are some farmers in here... a hilarious Northerner talking about "Proputty, proputty..." that was great.

To be fair, I didn't like 'In Memorium' so much and that is the center-piece of this collection, nearly a third of the total. My favorite was actually an earlier one, 'St Simeon Stylites' which had me cracking up, and I also really dug 'Maud.' There were a few poems in here that I looked up on Wikipedia because I wanted to know more about them, but generally I was OK with the small notes in the back and the lack of introductions or context. The edition I read has a sketch of Tennyson reading 'Maud' by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and that sketch kind of affected how I thought about Tennyson. Because in my head I usually picture him with this long-ass, pointy white beard but in the Rossetti sketch he's all pretzeled up on a couch, like he's kind of embarrassed... seems like a cool guy instead of someone from the House of Lords.

[Zee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like to properly review this book I need to tell the story of how I got it and how long I've had it, yada yada. When I was little, my favorite books were the Little House on the Prairie books, and in one of them, Ma gives Laura a book of Alfred Lord Tennyson poems, and Laura quotes the opening lines of the Lotos Eaters in the book and talks about how beautiful the poetry is. This made quite an impression on me.

So when I was like 13 I got my parents to buy me this book, right? And I had no clue what formal poetry was about or how to decipher it or anything. I was a nerd kid, to be sure, but I knew nothing. So I LOVED this book. It made me feel like I was so smart and polished and fancy cuz here I was reading Tennyson. I had no idea what any of the poems were talking about.

But, as I read it for the 4th time now, I have to say... not the biggest fan of Tennyson. His rhythm seems off-kilter to me, the themes - now that I understand them - don't seem that magnificent, I don't really care about Locksley Hall or charges of any brigade, and most of all--I think the Lotos Eaters poem ain't shit (sorry Laura). I will say that I thoroughly enjoy Lady of Shalott, but everything else... eh. I could probably live without more Tennyson in my life.

[☾ Sarah ⋆⁺₊✧ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25-4.5 stars

Absolutely loved these poems. Tennyson has such a fun, melodic way of writing which basically forces you to read it aloud and delight in the rhyme schemes and meter. His nature descriptions are also so beautiful and the images and metaphors he uses seem to jump out at you and parade in front of you in such a majestic and playful manner. My favorites are the following poems: Maud (basically my no 1 along with In Memoriam), In Memoriam A.H.H., St Simeon Stylites, The Lotos Eaters, Ulysses, Locksley Hall, The Vision of Sin, In the Valley of Cauteretz.

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives
And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change:
For surely now our household hearths are cold,
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy."
(The Lotos Eaters)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"Ah hark! they shout
'St. Simeon Stylites.' Why, if so,
God reaps a harvest in me. O my soul,
God reaps a harvest in thee."
(St. Simeon Stylites)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak."
(In Memoriam)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"His inner day can never die,
His night of loss is always there."
(In Memoriam)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"Come; let us go: your cheeks are pale;
But half my life I leave behind...
Yet in these ears, till hearing dies,
One set slow bell seems to toll
The passing of the sweetest soul
That ever look'd with human eyes."
(In Memoriam)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
...
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace."
(In Memoriam)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"And on the depths of death there swims
The reflex of a human face."
(In Memoriam)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"For a raven ever croaks, at my side,
Keep watch and ward, keep watch and ward,
Or thou wilt prove their tool.
Yea, too, myself from myself I guard,
For often a man’s own angry pride
Is cap and bells for a fool."
(Maud)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"We are puppets, Man in his pride, and Beauty fair in her flower;
Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an unseen hand at a game
That pushes us off from the board, and others ever succeed?
Ah yet, we cannot be kind to each other here for an hour;
We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother’s shame;
However we brave it out, we men are a little breed."
(Maud)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"Be mine a philosopher’s life in the quiet woodland ways,
Where if I cannot be gay let a passionless peace be my lot,
Far-off from the clamour of liars belied in the hubbub of lies;
From the long-neck’d geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise
Because their natures are little, and, whether he heed it or not,
Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies.

And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love,
The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill.
Ah Maud, you milkwhite fawn, you are all unmeet for a wife.
Your mother is mute in her grave as her image in marble above;
Your father is ever in London, you wander about at your will;
You have but fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life."
(Maud)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"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;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red."
(Maud)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"But the broad light glares and beats,
And the shadow flits and fleets
And will not let me be;
And I loathe the squares and streets,
And the faces that one meets,
Hearts with no love for me:
Always I long to creep
Into some still cavern deep,
There to weep, and weep, and weep
My whole soul out to thee."
(Maud)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"O me, why have they not buried me deep enough?
Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough,
Me, that was never a quiet sleeper?
Maybe still I am but half-dead;
Then I cannot be wholly dumb;
I will cry to the steps above my head
And somebody, surely, some kind heart will come
To bury me, bury me
Deeper, ever so little deeper."
(Maud)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"All along the valley, stream that flashest white,
Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night,
All along the valley, where thy waters flow,
I walk'd with one I loved two and thirty years ago.
All along the valley, while I walk'd to-day,
The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away;
For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed,
Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead,
And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree,
The voice of the dead was a living voice to me."
(In the Valley of Cauteretz)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease."
(The Lotos Eaters)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life!
...
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, 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)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"‘Tell me tales of thy first love—
April hopes, the fools of chance;
Till the graves begin to move,
And the dead begin to dance.
...

'You are bones, and what of that?
Every face, however full,
Padded round with flesh and fat,
Is but modell’d on a skull."
(The Vision of Sin)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
...
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope."
(In Memoriam)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

"Ah dear, but come thou back to me:
Whatever change the years have wrought,
I find not yet one lonely thought
That cries against my wish for thee."
(In Memoriam)

°❦⋆.ೃ࿔*:

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die."
"Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
“In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”
“Come into the garden, Maud,For the black bat, night, has flown…”
“The curse has come upon me, cried the Lady of Shalott.”
“My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.”
“She only said ‘My life is dreary, He cometh not’, she said.”
“Break, break, break On thy cold gray stones, O Sea.”

There is no Victorian poet more quotable than Tennyson, because there is no Victorian poet who wrote better poetry than Tennyson. He was meticulous in working and re-working over the lines in his poetry, almost insanely so. He had a remarkable understanding of rhythm and meter. As the quotations show, Tennyson understood the value of rhetoric. He was also versatile in verse forms and subject matter.

To praise Tennyson so highly is likely to raise hackles, as the great Victorian poet has many detractors, and even his admirers damn him with faint praise. Auden said that Tennyson was good at writing gloomy poetry, but a very stupid poet. Some people would dispute my claim that Tennyson was the greatest British poet of his age, or suggest that if he was, then clearly this was not a good age of poetry.

There were many prominent Victorian poets, including multiple Brontes, Brownings and Rossettis. This was certainly not as radical a period as the preceding Romantic age or the succeeding Modernist movement. At their worst, Victorians were overly wordy, mawkishly religious and rather dour.

Tennyson occasionally shares these faults. He is very much a poet of his time. Not all the poems in this selection are interesting. However when Tennyson is on form, he transcends the weaknesses of his peers.

Why then is Tennyson greeted with so much hostility? There are problems in terms of both content and form. Let us start by looking at content.

Tennyson is rightly seen as a poet of the establishment. He was beloved by Queen Victoria, and you hardly get more establishment than that. He was the Poet Laureate, a post often associated with staid conservatism. He accepted a peerage, albeit the second time he was offered one. He was a royalist, a nationalist, a jingoist, a supporter of colonialism and a militarist. His poems express support for the Christian establishment.

Admittedly Tennyson was something of a religious iconoclast. He was not an atheist, but he did come to lean towards agnosticism and pandeism in later life. Nonetheless works such as “Idylls of the King” hardly challenged the Christian establishment.

Tennyson’s style of poetry is not to everyone’s tastes either. It is actually quite readable, and not full of the obscurantism that plagues the Romantic and Modernist periods, but which critics seem to like. Curiously T S Eliot praised Tennyson highly. Tennyson uses plainer language, and is not afraid to be pretty.

His poetry does tend towards the idealised. The subject matter deals in Shakespeare, Arthurian legend and Greek mythology more than it deals in contemporary issues, with a few exceptions. Women exist in idealised form, often pining to the point of death for men. Tennyson wrote two poems about Shakespeare’s Mariana. In “Mariana,” she wishes only for death after being abandoned by her lover. “Mariana in the South” is a kind of southern remix of the earlier poem with Mariana declaring ‘Ava Maria’ from time to time so that we know she is a Catholic. I am uncertain if the poem is set in Italy or Spain.

The Lady of Shalott (Elaine from the Arthurian legends) is brought to death by the sight of Galahad, although Tennyson changes the details somewhat. Oenone is abandoned by Paris (who will abduct Helen of Troy). There is nothing for these women but to dedicate their lives to mourning their losses, in contrast with male heroes who are able to move on with their lives.

A notable exception is Maud, the subject of one of Tennyson’s best poems. The narrator describes a society that has become corrupt and sick through a period of peacetime, in which he falls in love with Maud. He first thinks that Maud is shallow and deceitful but love develops between them, especially during her brother’s absence.

Unfortunately the brother returns and tries to get Maud to marry a doltish friend of his. The narrator waits in the garden for Maud to meet him after a party, but her brother puts in an appearance. He strikes the narrator, who kills him. The narrator is forced to flee abroad, where he learns that Maud has died too. There is a descent into insanity followed by a curious coda, in which he recovers and goes off to fight in the Crimean War.

Such idealised romances may seem unreal, but they often contain coded hints of how the real Tennyson felt. He describes his own feelings of loss around women with whom he did enter a relationship. Most of all he pines for the loss of his friend, Arthur Hallam. Hallam’s death is referred to in innumerable poems across Tennyson’s life, and it is probably not an accident that Tennyson’s brilliant Arthurian work “Idylls of the King” is about King Arthur, and ends with his death.

Tennyson’s love for his friend Arthur was certainly very intense, and it is uncertain if there is a homosexual element in this, or if we should view it as a serious bromance. It informs Tennyson’s best poem, “In Memoriam AHH”, a long work describing Tennyson’s feelings about his friend’s death.

This is Tennyson’s most personal work, and at times Tennyson abandons his usual idealised style in favour of something more heartfelt. Each section of the poem offers an alternative idea about how Tennyson might regard his friend.

How can he forgive Death for putting Arthur somewhere that they can never talk together? What if Arthur can see everything Alfred is still doing on earth, including every shameful act or thought? What if Arthur is serenely indifferent to earthly sorrows, or enjoying himself in the afterlife with other people who do not love him as much as Alfred did? I can imagine we all experience a similar mixture of hopes, fears and wishful thinking about what happens to our loved ones who die before us.

Is Tennyson as stupid as Auden says? Perhaps. We do not look to Tennyson for insights into social and scientific developments in his time. Tennyson’s politics are absurdly blinkered. “The Charge of the Light Brigade” tries to turn a catastrophic blunder into a noble deed of heroism, which is one reason why it is not highly-regarded by critics. It is not great poetry, but like Churchill’s tub-thumping speeches it is despised by intellectuals but well-tuned to appeal to the hearts of ordinary people.

In Tennyson’s defence, his poetry has great intellectual breadth, not that this is a mark of intelligence. He has a good grasp of classical literature, and some awareness of developments such as the theory of evolution. We would look in vain for any very insightful opinion in the work of Tennyson, but it is hardly the job of the poet to be a great thinker. All that matters is that he makes great poetry.

I must admit I have warmed to Tennyson far more than I thought that I would. I imagined that I would admire his best works but feel at a remove from the poet himself. Instead I found myself seduced by the beauty of his best poetry, and I was sorry to finish the book. I do not share Tennyson’s views of the world, but I feel the power of his poetry, and I am touched by the obvious sadness that ran through Tennyson’s life.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tears, Idle Tears

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.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a summering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

Though this poem does not have his classical rhyme or rhyme scheme, it is amid my dearly loved of his writings.

Reading his very long elegiac verse: In Memoriam A H H, and memorising much of it, helped me to produce similar poetry of my own in Iambic Tetrametre. Author Henry Hallam died aged twenty-two in 1833 and Tennyson began writing his Elegy for him and it was not until 1850 that it was published.

All of my favourites are here in this volume. Break, Break, Break! Crossing The Bar, are memorised. His subject matter is diverse and very intriguing. . .hard for me to forget. Tennyson, Shelley, Shakespeare, Gray, and others all helped me in my own writing. I always pick up this copy to read Tennyson's works. I very much find his writings very emotional but well expressed and rendered. No wonder he became Poet Laureate in 1850 after Wm Wordsworth! Love his writings!

"I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar."

[Josh Boggs]

With few exceptions, every poem in this slight collection necessitates close reading. Anything less--if, perchance, Tennyson's burnished lyricism sweeps one along--will miss the fullness of realized emotion underpinning these verses. Tennyson is the great versifier of absence and remorse, and when he sets his quill to the task of fleshing out a flower or a castle, it is only to later examine the way in which they wilt or crumble, are blown-up, or pent within. Seldom do his verses grace a subject absent this catalyst, which Tennyson, nowhere more wide-ranging and poignant that In Memoriam, so fully and imaginatively transverses that the reader feels awash on the great tragic seas of life.

"Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things."

I am convinced that in the contemporary scene Tennyson has come to represent everything old and fusty in poetry. And yet these verses are far more adventurous and skilled than to admit of fustiness or anything staid in character. There is as much of Keats as Gladstone in Tennyson, and we all ought find this a refreshing discovery.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

No wonder Tennyson is my favorite poet. His poems can be as somber as death and then turn around and the next one be light and airy. And he can do that in the same poem. Oh! I wish I could write like him!

[Lis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked some of his poems but not all. My favorites include stuff like Locksley Hall and of course Ulysses.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sort of book is one that is easy to appreciate.  If you are one of those rare contemporary readers of poetry--since most contemporary readers of poetry happen to be poets themselves--this is a book that will likely pique your interest.  Like many similar collections that exist of poets [1], this book is short and straightforward and provides a selection of curated poems from a famous Victorian poet whose work is still remembered and recognized today.  If you enjoy reading poetry and have a few minutes to kill, this is an easy book to read, one that will provide a sample of great poems from the past by which contemporary poets and their efforts may be judged, and from which one may gain an appreciation of the poetic skill and deep melancholy and remarkable ambiguity of this notable poet.  Such a work may inspire one to write one's own poems in response, or at least they will provide a bit of enjoyment at the poetic skill of this once well-known writer.  If poetry is not your cup of tea, you will undoubtedly find other things to read, or not read at all.

Anyway, the contents of this book take up a little bit more than 100 small pages.  The complete poems included in this work are:  "The Outcast," "Mariana," "The Lady Of Shalott," "The Lotos-eaters," "Ulysses," "Morte d'Arthur," "Break, Break, Break...," "Locksley Hall," "The Golden Year," "The Charge Of The Light Brigade," "Titonus, " "Northern Farmer - New Style," "To E. FitzGerald," "Crossing The Bar," and "June Bracken And Heather."  In addition to these complete poems there are selections included from "The Princess," "In Memoriam A.H.H.," "Ode On The Death Of The Duke Of Wellington," "Maud:  A Monodrama," and "Merlin And Vivien."  On top of this the editor includes a chronology of Tennyson's life and times that examines his own life and works along with the poetic and social and political context of his time, which is a helpful addition to students of the Victorian world.  These poems could no doubt be more extensive, and one might always wish for more selections and perhaps even complete collections of what is selected from, but readers will be able to recognize that there is no filler material here and that all of these poems are worth reading and some of them are undeniable classics.

Even though this is a fairly small collection of poems, it is large enough to demonstrate that Tennyson had some characteristic approaches to poetry that are well worth reflecting on.  He frequently mentions the events of his own time and seems especially concerned with death and melodrama, and even contemporary politics.  Wherever contemporary events mix with death--as in the Charge Of The Light Brigade or his various memoria poetry--he can be trusted to provide some comment.  He is likewise somewhat cynical about contemporary culture (his "Northern Farmer - New Style" is particularly savage in this vein) and deeply nostalgic not only with regards to his own life but with regards to history as a whole, demonstrating a deep interest in the Greek epic poetry as well as the Arthurian cycle.  Not all contemporary readers are likely to share the same degree of historical knowledge or respect and regard for the past as Tennyson did, which makes it somewhat remarkable that his poetry still endures, largely because of its beauty and melancholy, I think.  Even for his time, though, Tennyson looked both backward and forward and was a voice full of irony and reflection rather than the sort of poet whose bumptious presentism makes it hard to appreciate later on.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

[Steph De Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tennyson is one of my favourite poets, so it's no surprise that I very much enjoyed immersing myself in this collection of his poetry. I found pleasure in revisiting several old favourites, including the incomparable "Ulysses" (which makes my all-time top-five list for poetry), "The Lotos Eaters", and "The Lady of Shalott".

I was disappointed, however, that this collection entirely omits selections from "The Idylls of the King"; anyone seeking out this portion of Tennyson's oeuvre should, therefore, look elsewhere for their fix of Arthurian romance.

Conversely, despite having read it before, I've discovered a fresh appreciation for "In Memoriam A.H.H.", Tennyson's extended elegy for his friend, Arthur Hallam, which includes the oft-quoted line, "'Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all" and several others of startling beauty.

I suspect I'll come back to this collection several times more in the future, so I'm happy to have a copy in pride of place on my bookshelves.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to read some more Tennyson and picked this up for a couple dollars. A nice collection with some stunning passages, though I wish I'd gotten one with some notes about vocabulary and setting - a few of the poems were hard to understand without any additional information, and except for a timeline of Tennyson's life in the back, this did not have any. Several of the poems were familiar, but others were completely new - "Maud" for instance, which had some passages that I will definitely revisit. And now I hope I will remember - "'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all" is a line from "In Memoriam."

[Gabrielle Danoux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dans cette anthologie de poèmes, le rythme est d'une grande fluidité, en particulier dans The Lady of Shalott, où il va par moments jusqu'à épouser la progression de l'intrigue.
De très nombreux mythes sont présents, en particulier la légende des chevaliers de la Table Ronde, ainsi que des héros contemporains à qui le poète prête ses propres idéaux.
Omniprésence du désespoir ou tout du moins d'une certaine mélancolie.
Une lecture ancienne qui résonne encore en moi, par la beauté du triptyque à déchiffrer : amour-mythe-mort.

[Aidan Jude · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were a few gold nuggets in here (The Eagle, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Daisy). Yet, Tennyson’s prose seems outdated and dare I say boring? I can read Keats (or any of the other romantics) and be infatuated with similar language, but Tennyson feels a bit too “historian-esque” and dallies on ancient subject matter for far too long (there are a LOT of multi-act prose poems in here).

Idk - give me Whitman, Keats, or Shelly any day over Tennyson. Sorry not sorry.

[Taylor Kirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to read a few of Tennyson's works for a Victorian literature class and I can say, I think I have a new favorite poet. I was already familiar with his work "The Lady of Shallot", but "In Memorium" was a good read as well. I definitely recommending looking up some of the backstories behind these poems as they make them make more sense and add more depth that you wouldn't get from an initial read.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always thought that Tennyson was a dry old stick, I was so wrong. I bought this because I was a sucker for the Lady of Shallot, however I have since discovered that Tennyson wrote numerous poems that I have loved for years. A gorgeous edition and a recommended dip into poetry book.

[Lindsey Rojem · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favorite or my style, of them all I liked The Charge Of The Light Brigade the best.

[Michael A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5. Not my preferred aesthetic but it is obvious to me that Tennyson is a fantastic poet; excellent command of meter and rhyme imo.

[Jessica Connelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only redeemable poem is Ulysses and even that starts questionable.

[GreyAtlas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've got a modern library edition, so I don't think it's the same as this.
My favorite pieces were "the palace of art", tithonus, tears idle tears, locksley hall, vastness.

[colette · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved the following:
in memoriam a.h.h. (this one most of all)
the kraken
the lady of shalott
the epic [morte d’arthur]

[Michael Vawser]

First edition 1971

[Silvie Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

10/10yson

[Nicholas Tamouridis Poet · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this lovely collection of 63 poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), I tried to narrow my favourites to a TOP 20 and dismally failed with 22, and are as follows:

• The Outcast
• Mariana
• The Lady of Shalott
• Monte d’Arthur
• The Splendour Falls (from The Princess)
• Tears, Idle Tears (from the Princess)
• Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal (from the Princess)
• Come Down, O Maid (from the Princess)
• from In Memoriam A.H.H. (Verses 1, 27, 50, 64, 74, 77 & 101)
• The Charge of the Light Brigade
• from Maud: A Monodrama (Verses 11 (part 1), 22 (part 1), 4 (part 2) & 6 (part 2)
• Tithonus
• Merlin and Vivien (from Merlin & Vivien)

[Sameen Shakya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lord Alfred Tennyson is one of the giants of 19th century English poetry and though I've read a few of his poems here and there, I've long since wanted to do a deep dive into his poetry, thus my reading of this book.

Tennyson's poetry is exactly as the reputation that precedes it. And more. What struck me was how narrative and filled with fantastical elements it was. His rhythm, rhyme, and sense of metrics is outstanding, as expected, but there's also so much pathos in it. So much feeling. It's quite amazing and also endearing.

[Jeffrey Sandberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

My current favorite poet after delving into Yeats, Keats, Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Wordsworth, Rumi, cummings, Coleridge and many others.

This collection is superb and my favorite poem in it is "The Two Voices". His diction and style is just so inspirational, a truly high caliber/top kek visionary and King among poets

[Monica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried... really, I did. But it felt like I was at one of those theater college parties where half of the people were drunk and singing along to a guitar player and the other half were having a deep philosophical discussion about the meaning of life and love and history and using words I didn't understand. And I was somewhere in the middle of these two groups, not fitting into either one of them. I tried to fit in, I tried to understand where they were coming from, but I didn't... and I didn't get Tennyson. I would get halfway through a stanza... yes a stanza and my eyes would glaze over and I would have to reread and then the same thing would happen again. Oi Voi!

There were a few "classic phrases" used in some of the poetry that I wondered if Tennyson coined or not but am too lazy to look this up and frankly just don't care enough about Tennyson in general to have this piece of trivia at my fingertips.

Some noteworthy poems were
-The Lady of Shalott
-The poems from "The Princess"
-Maud

"In Memoriam A. H. H." I could really have lived without ever reading.

[Jemina Feyarro · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of poetry, contains so many brilliant ones. The Lady of Shalott will always be one of my favourite poems. Two others which I love are Mariana and The Outcast. I always appreciate a poem that contains a story (rather than one about feelings or something) and Tennyson does this so well in so many of his poems. I also love how he creates an almost faerie tale like atmosphere to some of his poems, making stories from myths and legend come alive. I'm less keen on his war like poems but there's enough of one's I enjoy in this collection to keep me happy.

[Pink · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've decided that these selected poetry editions are not the best selections. I know there are Tennyson poems I enjoy, but none were included here. I think in future I will try a different publisher to help with my continued effort to appreciate some classic poetry.

[D. Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend this to beginner and advanced poets alike. While whimsical would not quite catch his work playful would do just fine. The language itself is worth the read because it puts you in his time and place and also helps set the stage.