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Famous Alfred Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Alfred poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous alfred poems. These examples illustrate what a famous alfred poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing

 Under my eye;
Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing

 Over the sky.
One after another the white clouds are fleeting;
Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating

 Full merrily;
 Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to...Read more of this...



by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Beautiful city

Beautiful city, the centre and crater of European confusion,
O you with your passionate shriek for the rights of an equal
humanity,
How often your Re-volution has proven but E-volution
Roll’d again back on itself in the tides of a civic insanity!...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Sunset and evening star, 
And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
When I put out to sea, 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
Too full for sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
Turns again home. 

Twilight and evening bell, 
And after that the dark! 
And may there be no sadness ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm;
And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands;
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf
In cluster; then a moulder'd church; and higher
A long street climbs to one tall-tower'd mill;
And high in heaven behind it a gray down
With Danish barrows; and a hazelwood,
By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes
Green in a cupl...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...The last tall son of Lot and Bellicent, 
And tallest, Gareth, in a showerful spring 
Stared at the spate. A slender-shafted Pine 
Lost footing, fell, and so was whirled away. 
'How he went down,' said Gareth, 'as a false knight 
Or evil king before my lance if lance 
Were mine to use--O senseless cataract, 
Bearing all down in thy precipitancy-- 
A...Read more of this...



by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Queen Guinevere had fled the court, and sat 
There in the holy house at Almesbury 
Weeping, none with her save a little maid, 
A novice: one low light betwixt them burned 
Blurred by the creeping mist, for all abroad, 
Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full, 
The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face, 
Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still....Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...om such a monarch steal
An hour, and not defraud the public weal?
Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame,
And virtuous Alfred, a more sacred name,
After a life of gen'rous toils endur'd,
The Gaul subdu'd, or property secur'd,
Ambition humbled, mighty cities storm'd,
Or laws establish'd, and the world reform'd;
Clos'd their long glories with a sigh, to find
Th' unwilling gratitude of base mankind!
All human virtue, to its latest breath
Finds envy never conquer'd, but by death...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Lucilla, wedded to Lucretius, found
Her master cold; for when the morning flush
Of passion and the first embrace had died 
Between them, tho' he loved her none the less, 
Yet often when the woman heard his foot 
Return from pacings in the field, and ran 
To greet him with a kiss, the master took 
Small notice, or austerely, for his mind 
Half buried in som...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...A city clerk, but gently born and bred;
His wife, an unknown artist's orphan child--
One babe was theirs, a Margaret, three years old:
They, thinking that her clear germander eye
Droopt in the giant-factoried city-gloom,
Came, with a month's leave given them, to the sea:
For which his gains were dock'd, however small:
Small were his gains, and hard his wor...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...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 ove...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...ide.

Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured
As the broidery of Bayeux
The England of that dawn remains,
And this of Alfred and the Danes
Seems like the tales a whole tribe feigns
Too English to be true.

Of a good king on an island
That ruled once on a time;
And as he walked by an apple tree
There came green devils out of the sea
With sea-plants trailing heavily
And tracks of opal slime.

Yet Alfred is no fairy tale;
His days as our days ran,
He also looked forth ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Half a league, half a league, 
Half a league onward, 
All in the valley of Death 
Rode the six hundred. 
"Forward, the Light Brigade! 
Charge for the guns!" he said: 
Into the valley of Death 
Rode the six hundred. 

"Forward, the Light Brigade!" 
Was there a man dismayed? 
Not though the soldier knew 
Some one had blundered: 
Their's n...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...From noiseful arms, and acts of prowess done 
In tournament or tilt, Sir Percivale, 
Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The Pure, 
Had passed into the silent life of prayer, 
Praise, fast, and alms; and leaving for the cowl 
The helmet in an abbey far away 
From Camelot, there, and not long after, died. 

And one, a fellow-monk among the rest, 
Ambr...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ON either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye, 
That clothe the wold and meet the sky; 
And thro' the field the road runs by 
To many-tower'd Camelot; 5 
And up and down the people go, 
Gazing where the lilies blow 
Round an island there below, 
The island of Shalott. 

Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 10 
Little breezes dusk ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Dagonet, the fool, whom Gawain in his mood 
Had made mock-knight of Arthur's Table Round, 
At Camelot, high above the yellowing woods, 
Danced like a withered leaf before the hall. 
And toward him from the hall, with harp in hand, 
And from the crown thereof a carcanet 
Of ruby swaying to and fro, the prize 
Of Tristram in the jousts of yesterday, 
Cam...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...I

Who would be
A mermaid fair,
Singing alone,
Combing her hair
Under the sea,
In a golden curl
With a comb of pearl,
On a throne?

II

I would be a mermaid fair;
I would sing to myself the whole of the day;
With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair;
And still as I comb'd I would sing and say,
'Who is it loves me? who loves not me?'
I would comb my hair ti...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...At break of day the College Portress came: 
She brought us Academic silks, in hue 
The lilac, with a silken hood to each, 
And zoned with gold; and now when these were on, 
And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons, 
She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know 
The Princess Ida waited: out we paced, 
I first, and following through the porch that sang 
All r...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day 
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun 
Up to the people: thither flocked at noon 
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half 
The neighbouring borough with their Institute 
Of which he was the patron. I was there 
From college, visiting the son,--the son 
A Walter too,--with others of our set, 
Five others: ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, 
And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away: 
'Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted' 
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: ''Fore God I am no coward; 
But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear, 
And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick. 
We a...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Once more the gate behind me falls; 
Once more before my face 
I see the moulder'd Abbey-walls, 
That stand within the chace. 

Beyond the lodge the city lies, 
Beneath its drift of smoke; 
And ah! with what delighted eyes 
I turn to yonder oak. 

For when my passion first began, 
Ere that, which in me burn'd, 
The love, that makes me thrice a man,...Read more of this...

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