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Lyric Poem · Life

Move Eastward, Happy Earth

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Move eastward, happy earth, and leave

Yon orange sunset waning slow:

From fringes of the faded eve,

O, happy planet, eastward go:

Till over thy dark shoulder glow

Thy silver sister world, and rise

To glass herself in dewey eyes

That watch me from the glen below.

Ah, bear me with thee, lightly borne,

Dip forward under starry light,

And move me to my marriage-morn,

And 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).

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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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