Tears, Idle Tears

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

     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-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square ;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
 
     Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
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.
 
Alfred, Lord Tennyson | Classic Poems
 

The Brook ] Blow, Bugle, Blow ] Come into the garden Maud ] Tithonus ] Ulysses ] [ Tears, Idle Tears ] The Lady of Shalott ] Song of the Lotus-Eaters ] The Charge of the Light Brigade ] In the Valley of Cauteretz ] In Memoriam ] The Eagle ]

 

 


 

 

 
 
 
 

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