The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

Upon her perfect lips.
‘Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere’ (1842)
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.
‘Song—The Owl’ (1830)
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world.
‘Tithonus’ (1860, revised 1864) l. 1
Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?
‘The gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.’
‘Tithonus’ (1860, revised 1864) l. 46
Of happy men that have the power to die,
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
‘Tithonus’ (1860, revised 1864) l. 70
You’ll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine.
‘To the Revd F. D. Maurice’ (1855) st. 5
All the charm of all the Muses
often flowering in a lonely word.
‘To Virgil’ (1882) st. 3
I salute thee, Mantovano,
I that loved thee since my day began,
Wielder of the stateliest measure
ever moulded by the lips of man.
‘To Virgil’ (1889) st. 10
This truth within thy mind rehearse,
That in a boundless universe
Is boundless better, boundless worse.
‘The Two Voices’ (1842) st. 9
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.
‘The Two Voices’ (1842) st. 132
It little profits that an idle king,