Lyric Poem · Love
O Beauty, Passing Beauty!
1O beauty, passing beauty! Sweetest sweet!
2How can thou let me waste my youth in sighs?
3I only ask to sit beside thy feet.
4Thou knowest I dare not look into thine eyes.
5Might I but kiss thy hand! I dare not fold
6My arms about thee — scarcely dare to speak.
7And nothing seems to me so wild and bold,
8As with one kiss to touch thy blessed cheek.
9Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control
10Within the thrilling brain could keep afloat
11The subtle spirit. Even while I spoke,
12The bare word "kiss" hath made my inner soul
13To tremble like a lute string, ere the note
14Hath melted in the silence that it broke.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“O Beauty, Passing Beauty!” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson — quilloak.com/poems/o-beauty-passing-beauty
Quick facts
- Poem
- O Beauty, Passing Beauty!
- Poet
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- Length
- 14 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Love, Sad, Childhood
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
- 14 lines · one 14-line stanza
- Line length
- Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter 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
- PoetryDBO Beauty, Passing Beauty! 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 46c518be7297553e…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.