Victorian

Charles Tennyson Turner

1808–1879

Charles Tennyson Turner (1808–1879) was an English clergyman and poet, born Charles Tennyson at Somersby, Lincolnshire, and the elder brother of Alfred Tennyson; the two brothers appeared together in Poems by Two Brothers. He added the surname Turner after inheriting property from a relative, and spent much of his life as a parish priest in Lincolnshire.

He is remembered chiefly for his sonnets, which turn small observed things—a lark, a rainbow, a drowned spaniel, the bell of a buoy—into brief pictures with a moral or elegiac turn. The poems here are taken from Collected Sonnets, Old and New (London: C. Kegan Paul, 1880), the posthumous gathering of the sonnets he published in 1830, 1864, 1868 and 1873 together with those first printed there, and the few lyrics at its end.

Poems (350)

To My Sister Mary
The Aeolian Harp
The Kiss of Betrothal
Perseverance
To the Nightingale
To the Lark
The Ocean
Love of Home: A Rejoinder
How can the sweetness of a gentle mind
Vexation waits on passion's changeful glow
I have a circlet of thy sunny hair
A Summer Twilight
O be thou keen to guess when Flattery's near!
No trace is left upon the vulgar mind
Autumn
The foot of Time so soundless never pass'd
Supposed to Be Written by One on Whom the Death of an Excellent Woman Has Forced the Conviction of a Future State
Supposed to Be Written by One on Whom the Death of an Excellent Woman Has Forced the Conviction of a Future State (continued)
We cannot keep delight — we cannot tell
A Calm Evening
Collision of the Ayr and Comet Steamboats
On Startling Some Pigeons
Seest thou her blushes, that like shadows sweet
A Perverse Lover
On a Picture of the Fates
Martial Ardour in Age
On Seeing a Child Blush on His First View of a Corpse
To the Robin
The Butterfly
Death and its Antidote
O God, impart Thy blessing to my cries
O! it is sweet to weave aerial ties
Decadence of Greece, 1830
Thought travels past thee with intenser glow
An English Church
A Mourning Lover
Joy Came from Heaven
Silkworms and Spiders
A Birthday
Greece: An Aspiration
The Earthquake
The 'Cannon Fever'
The Prisoner
The Portrait Painter
Supposed to Be Written by Any Feeble-Minded Man Meditating Self-Destruction
To A. H. H.
A Forest Lake
A lovely vision fading out of sight
The Rainbow
On a Genius of Lowly Estate
Prefatory
Great Localities. An Aspiration
Great Localities. An Aspiration (continued)
Great Localities. An Aspiration (continued)
Token Lights. A Contrast
Great Localities. Rome
The Moselle Boatman and his Daughter
The Moselle Boatman and his Daughter (continued)
The Blush of Constantine at the Council of Nice
Constantine's Amphitheatre at Treves
The Lion's Skeleton
The Arrow-King
Cynotaphium
Cynotaphium (continued)
The Vacant Cage
The Vacant Cage (continued)
Bird-Nesting
The Lachrymatory
An Incident in a Church
To the Survivors
On the Death of Two Little Children
Goddard and Lycidas
Hope Beneath the Waters
The Buoy-Bell
The Rainbow
Anastasis
The Death-Smile of Cowper
Apprehension of Blindness
Loss and Restoration of Smell
On the Statue of Lord Byron
On the Statue of Lord Byron (continued)
Mary Queen of Scots
Mary Queen of Scots (continued)
Queen Elizabeth
The Order of the Star of India
The Order of the Star of India (continued)
A Thought for March 1860
Autocratic Policy of the Federal Americans
Possible Results of the Friends' Mission to St. Petersburg
Possible Results of the Friends' Mission to St. Petersburg (continued)
The Great Exhibition of 1862
The Great Exhibition of 1862 (continued)
Hebron
Hebron (continued)
Hebron (continued)
The Telegraph Cable to India
The South-Foreland Electric Light
Greatness of England
The Wind-Bound Mission
The Thaw-Wind
An April Day
The Charming of the East Wind
Summer Evening: Retirement of a Garden
Fulvia
Fulvia (continued)
An Application of the Waxing Moon
The Planet and the Tree
Hesperus
Nightingales
A Night Thought
Resuscitation of Fancy
The Forest Glade
The Process of Composition
Morning
The Lattice at Sunrise
Wind on the Corn
Harvest-Home
Ceasing of the Storm
Time and Twilight
Dreams
The Marble Landing
The Landing of King George I. Of Greece at the Piraeus
To a Friend
Alexander the Great's Designs at Babylon Frustrated
Julian's Attempt to Build on the Site of the Temple
Terminus
Modern Termini
Christ and Orpheus
Christ and Orpheus (continued)
Christ and Orpheus (continued)
On Certain Books
On Certain Books (continued)
A Dream
A Waking Thought
A Waking Thought (continued)
The Transfiguration
Gethsemane
The Critics at Gethsemane
The 'Higher Criticism'
St. John's Eagle
The Luxor Nativity
A Non-Natural Christmas
A Non Natural Easter
A Non-Natural Ascension and Whit-Sunday
German and French Gospels
Leben Jesu and Vie de Jesus
The Young Neologist at Bethlehem
How the 'Higher Criticism' Blesses the Bible
My First and Last Strophe
The Gold-Crested Wren
The Holy Emerald
St. Augustine and Monica
Nehemiah's Night Ride
Salome
Salome (continued)
Charlotte Corday
Wolf and the Casket
Philoctetes
Philoctetes (continued)
On an Old Roman Shield Found in the Thames
On the Same
The Bier of the Christian Soldier
The Illumination of the English and French Fleets at Portsmouth
On a Picture of Armida and Rinaldo, with the Decoy-Nymph
Art and Faith
Lucy
Mary: A Reminiscence
Mary: A Reminiscence (continued)
Morning Sorrows
Minnie and her Dove
Eustace and Edith
Make-Believe Hunting
The School-Boy's Dream on the Night before the Holidays
The Rogue's Nightmare
Little Phoebe
Alice Wade versus Small-Pox
Ellen
Annie and Ambrose
Going Home
Jealousy
The Half-Rainbow
The Parting-Gate
Hero and Leander
Drowned in the Tropics
The Sea-Fairies' Answer
Vienna and in Memoriam
To a Little Child Who Asked for a Laurel Crown
A Recantation
Little Samuel
A Brilliant Day
The Starling
No Nightingales, or Compensation
The Wood-Rose
The Home-Field. Evening
Maggie's Star
A Summer Night in the Beehive
The Bee-Wisp
The Fly's Lecture
The Rookery
On a Vase of Gold-Fish
The Plea of the Shot Swallow
The Last Sweep of the Scythe
Harvest-Home
The Storm: A Harvest Memory
The First Week in October
From Harvest to January
Last Year's Harvest
The Steam Threshing-Machine
The Steam Threshing-Machine (continued)
November Sunshine and the House-Flies
The Drunkard's Last Market
The Late Pastor of Woldsby Ebriorum
On the Eclipse of the Moon of October 1865
On an Annular Eclipse of the Sun in a Storm
The Moon and Sin, an Illustration
Orion
Fanaticism: A Night-Scene in the Open Air
Missing the Meteors, 1866
A Look-Out for Thirty Years
The Moorland Tree in the Garden
In and Out of the Pine-Wood
Silent Praise
A Forest Sunset
Written at the Wood-Sale of Messrs. Blank and Co. Non-Resident Proprietors
The Needles' Lighthouse from Keyhaven, Hampshire
Danger: A Personification
A Farewell to the Isle of Wight
The White Horse of Westbury
Beau Nash
A Photograph on the Red Gold
On Board a Jersey Steamer
Vie de Jesus
Poor Hodge and the Rev. Sans Foy
Pray, Think, and Strive!
Little Sophy by the Seaside
The Butterfly and the Rose
Nausicaa
The Dying Sculptor
Free Greece
The Seaside
The Barmouth Sea-Bridge
On a Child's Eyes
Little Nora
Our Mary and the Child-Mummy
Called from Bed
Emmeline
The Hydraulic Ram
On the Monument of the Princess Elizabeth Stuart in Newport Church, Isle of Wight
The Sick Orphan
The Missing Bride
The Fir-Grove
The Axe Forbidden
England's Honour
Enforced War
Dishonourable Peace
Arms Old and New
The Bomb and the Organ
To a French Poet and Refugee
The Ascent of Snowdon
The Cattle Train
Human Sorrows
The Artist on Penmaenmawr
Cader Idris at Sunset
The Old Hills'-Man and his Truck
Welsh Lucy
The Little Heir of Shame
The Harvest Moon
Old Ruralities
To a Red-Wheat Field
To a Scarecrow, or Malkin, Left Long after Harvest
The Willow
The Old Fox-Hunter
To the Gossamer-Light
On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book
The Eagle and the Sonnet
Gout and Wings
Podager Begs Pardon of Birds, Bees, and Wings in General
A Colony of Nightingales
The Sparrow and the Dew-Drop
To a Cuckoo in a Highway Hedge
The Swan and the Peacock
My Timepiece
Our New Church
Our New Church Clock
Twelve o'clock at Noon
The Afternote of the Hour
After the School-Feast
The Murder of Bishop Patteson
The Pastor's Prayer
To the Holy Virgin
The Palm-Willow
A Recantation
On Some Humming-Birds in a Glass Case
Localities of Burns
To a Starved Hare in the Garden in Winter
On the Secularists' Notion of Making Our Churches into Museums and Exhibitions
The Air Register
An Evening in Harvest Time
Nature and Language
The Classic Lark
On Seeing a Little Child Spin a Coin of Alexander the Great
To a 'Tenting' Boy
East or West
The Flock for the Market
Paulum Sylvae
The Lectern's Foot
Letty's Globe
The Oak and the Hill
The Mute Lovers on the Railway Journey
A Night-Charge against a Swan by a Lover
The Seaside Truants
The Innocent Listener
The Sonneteer to the Sea-Shell
To a Nightingale on its Return
The Drowned Spaniel
The Classic Canary on Its Death, by a Student
Great Britain through the Ice
To Mrs. Cameron, Freshwater, Isle of Wight
The Lover and his Watch
Beau Nash and the Roman
The Lark's Nest
Old Stephen
The Sighing of the Boehmer Wald
Public and Private Use of the Telegraph
The Widowed Bridegroom
The Posted Swan
Julius Caesar and the Honey-Bee
Nightingales in Lincolnshire
It was her first sweet child, her heart's
On Shooting a Swallow in Early Youth
The Quiet Tide near Ardrossan
Agnes and Aries
Rose and Cushie
Two Sorts of Emigrants
To a German Lady
To a Greek Girl on the Sea Shore
The Wedding Posy
Millie Macgill
To Beatrice on Her First Interview with Dante
Calvus to a Fly
Cowper's Three Hares
A Country Dance
Shadows off the Coast
The Altar
A Legend from De Lamartine's Travels in the East, Versified
An Incident on the Dee
The council of the brave are met
Ye mighty forests, deep and old
A Father to His Sleeping Child
My Mother

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