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Lyric Poem · Life

Move Eastward, Happy Earth

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1Move eastward, happy earth, and leave

2Yon orange sunset waning slow:

3From fringes of the faded eve,

4O, happy planet, eastward go:

5Till over thy dark shoulder glow

6Thy silver sister world, and rise

7To glass herself in dewey eyes

8That watch me from the glen below.

9Ah, bear me with thee, lightly borne,

10Dip forward under starry light,

11And move me to my marriage-morn,

12And round again to happy night.

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Quick facts

Poem
Move Eastward, Happy Earth
Poet
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Length
12 lines
Form
Lyric Poem
Themes
Life

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape
12 lines · 2 stanzas of 4–8 lines
Line length
Mostly 8-syllable lines (tetrameter length).
The poem’s silhouette — approximate syllables per line, measured from the text above. Even bars mean a measured line; ragged bars mean the poem sets its own widths.

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record
Alfred, Lord Tennyson1809–1892
Source record
PoetryDBMove Eastward, Happy Earth by alfred-lord-tennyson, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision
Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record
Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint
SHA-256 55457422e772e725
Editorial handling
Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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