Tennyson, Alfred
Alfred Tennyson, invariably known as Alfred Lord Tennyson on all his books, was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, the fourth of the twelve children of George Tennyson, clergyman, and his wife, Elizabeth. In 1816 Tennyson was sent to Louth Grammar School, which he disliked so intensely that from 1820 he was educated at home until at the age of 18 he joined his two brothers at Trinity College, Cambridge and with his brother Charles published his first book, Poems by Two Brothers the same year.
His second book, Poems Chiefly Lyrical was published in 1830. In 1833, Tennyson's best friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who was engaged to his sister, died, inspiring some of his best work including In Memoriam, Ulysses and the Passing of Arthur.
In 1850, following William Wordsworth, Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate and married his childhood friend, Emily Sellwood. They had two children, Hallam born in 1852 and Lionel, two years later. In 1884, as a great favourite of both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, he was raised to the peerage and was thereafter known as Baron Tennyson of Aldworth. He was the first Englishman to be granted such a high rank solely for literary distinction.
Tennyson continued to write poetry throughout his life and in the 1870s also wrote a number of plays. he died in 1892 at the age of 83 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
“Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with thoseThat loved me, and alone”
“Kate saith the world is void of might.Kate saith the men are gilded flies.Kate snaps her fingers at my vows;Kate will not hear of lovers sighs.I would I were an armed knight,Far-famed for well-won enterprise,And wearing on my swarthy browsThe garland of new-wreathed empriseFor in a moment I would pierceThe blackest files of clanging fight,And strongly strike to left and right,In dreaming of my lady's eyes.O, Kate loves well the bold and fierce;But none are bold enough for Kate,She cannot find a fitting mate.”
“I had liefer twenty years/Skip to the broken music of my brains/Than any broken music thou canst make.”
“Yet all experience is an arch wherethroughGleams that untraveled world whose margin fadesForever and forever when I move.How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!As though to breathe were life!”