Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson is one of the greatest poets of the Victorian period. He was Poet Laureate in 1850, and he wrote works about King Arthur, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and "Ulysses."

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born on August 6, 1809 at Somersby, Lincolnshire. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, was a rector and clergyman.

Alfred Lord Tennyson died at Aldwort on October 6, 1892, at the age of 83. He requested that his poem, "Crossing the Bar," always be printed last in any collection of his works. He was buried in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Alfred Lord Tennyson married Emily Sellwood in 1836.

Alfred Lord Tennyson attended four years of school, and was then tutored at home. He then attended Trinity College, Cambridge. While at college, he joined The Apostles, a literary club.

Alfred Lord Tennyson was the Poet Laureate in 1850, and he served for 42 years. He was an important figure in Victorian literature. The addition of poems like "The Lady of Shalott," "The Lotus-eaters," "Morte d'Arthur," and "Ulysses" to his revised version of "Poems" was published to critical acclaim.

Alfred Lord Tennyson is famous for "In Memoriam" (1850), which mourned the death of Arthur Hallam, and took him 17 years to complete. In the poem, he writes: "O life as futile, then, as frail! / O for thy voice to soothe and bless! / What hope of answer, or redress? / Behind the veil, behind the veil."

"This laurel greener from the brows
Of him that uttered nothing base." - To the Queen

"This truth within thy mind rehearse,
That in a boundless universe
Is boundless better, boundless worse."
- The Two Voices

"How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use,—
As tho’ to breathe were life!"
- Ulysses

"Into the jaws of death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred."
- The Charge of the Light Brigade

"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."

T.S. Eliot once called Tennyson the "great master of metric as well as of melancholia."

"Crossing the Bar"

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 or 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 of farewell;
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.