Idylls of the King Quotes

“Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of: Wherefore, let thy voice,
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“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, Idylls of the King

“This madness has come on us for our sins.”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“While he gazed
The 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 default
Of will and nature, so did Pelleas lend
All the young beauty of his own soul to hers”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“In her right hand the lily, in her left
The letter--all her bright hair streaming down--
And all the coverlid was cloth of gold
Drawn to her waist, and she herself in white
All but her face, and that clear-featured face
Was lovely, for she did not seem as dead,
But fast asleep, and lay as though she smiled.”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“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, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“And Gareth bowed himself with all obedience to the King, and wrought
All kind of service with a noble ease
That graced the lowliest act in doing it.”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“And while he waited in the castle court,
The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang
Clear 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 is
That sings so delicately clear, and make
Conjecture of the plumage and the form;
So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;
And made him like a man abroad at morn
When first the liquid note beloved of men
Comes flying over many a windy wave
To Britain, and in April suddenly
Breaks 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, Idylls of the King

“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, Idylls of the King

“What happiness to reign a lonely king,
Vext — O ye stars that shudder over me,
O earth that soundest hollow under me,
Vext with waste dreams? for saving I be joined
To her that is the fairest under heaven,
I seem as nothing in the mighty world,
And cannot will my will, nor work my work
Wholly, nor make myself in mine own realm
Victor and lord. But were I joined with her,
Then might we live together as one life,
And reigning with one will in everything
Have power on this dark land to lighten it,
And power on this dead world to make it live.”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“And even the Holy Quest, and all but her;”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“scarlet, and the pearls; and all the knights,”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“I myself beheld the King
Charge at the head of all his Table Round,
And all his legions crying Christ and him,
And break them; and I saw him, after, stand
High on a heap of slain, from spur to plume
Red as the rising sun with heathen blood,
And seeing me, with a great voice he cried,
"They are broken, they are broken!" for the King,
However mild he seems at home, nor cares
For triumph in our mimic wars, the jousts—
For if his own knight cast him down, he laughs
Saying, his knights are better men than he—
Yet in this heathen war the fire of God
Fills him: I never saw his like: there lives
No greater leader.”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“fairy changeling lay the mage;”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“Arthur spake, 'Behold, for these have sworn   To wage my wars, and worship me their King;   The old order changeth, yielding place to new;   And we that fight for our fair father Christ,”
― Baron Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“So vanish friendships only made in wine.”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“But, as he walked, King Arthur panted hard,
  Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed
  When all the house is mute. So sighed”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“They served their use, their time; for every knight
  Believed himself a greater than himself,
  And every follower eyed him as a God;
  Till he, being lifted up beyond himself,
  Did mightier deeds than elsewise he had done,
  And so the realm was made; but then their vows—
  First mainly through that sullying of our Queen—
  Began to gall the knighthood, asking whence
  Had Arthur right to bind them to himself?”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“One rose, a rose to gather by and by,
  One rose, a rose, to gather and to wear,
  No rose but one—what other rose had I?
  One rose, my rose; a rose that will not die,”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“Then said the monk, 'Poor men, when yule is cold,”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“Sir Lancelot and his charger, and a spear”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“No diamonds! for God's love, a little air!”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“King, duke, earl,
  Count, baron”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“As Love, if Love be perfect, casts out fear,
So Hate, if Hate be perfect, casts out fear.

- Merlin and Vivian”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true;
Here, thro' the feeble twilight of this world
Groping, how many, until we pass and reach
That other, where we see as we are seen.

Geraint and Enid”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud;
Turn thy wild wheel thro' sunshine, storm and cloud;
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.

Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown;
With that wild wheel we go not up or down;
Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.

Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands;
Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands;
For man is man and master of his fate.

Turn, turn thy wheel above the staring crowd;
Thy wheel and thou are shadows in the cloud;
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.

- "Enid's Song", The Marriage of Geraint”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“Ye think the rustic cackle of your bourg
The murmur of the world!

The Marriage of Geraint”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“Out of the smoke, at once
I leap from Satan's foot to Peter's knee

Gareth and Lynette”
― Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King

“But there was heard among the holy hymns A voice as of the waters, for she dwells Down in a deep‐ calm, whatsoever storms may shake the world”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King: By Alfred Lord Tennyson - Illustrated