In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
The line comes early in Locksley Hall, a dramatic monologue spoken by a young man who recalls the love of his cousin Amy and the bitterness that followed. It is often quoted for its spring mood, though the poem is far gloomier.
Break, break, break, / On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! / And I would that my tongue could utter / The thoughts that arise in me.
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,
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness;
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.