Break, break, break, / On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! / And I would that my tongue could utter / The thoughts that arise in me.
This is the opening stanza of a short lament for a loss that words cannot reach. The poem is generally read as a response to the death of Tennyson’s close friend Arthur Hallam in 1833.
In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw / With ravine, shriek’d against his creed—
The old order changeth, yielding place to new, / And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players;
Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me –
Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once.