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The Princess: The splendour falls

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Teacher card

Published
1847, in The Princess
Length
18 lines, 128 words, 1 word in 64 is long
Year band
Reading load: Years 3–4. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes
love, retirement, thanks
Time
5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

The splendour falls on castle wallsAnd snowy summits old in story:The long light shakes across the lakes,And the wild cataract leaps in glory.Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,And thinner, clearer, farther going!O sweet and far from cliff and scarThe horns of Elfland faintly blowing!Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,They faint on hill or field or river:Our echoes roll from soul to soul,And grow for ever and for ever.Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (died 1892), The Princess (1847), lines 1465–1484 of Project Gutenberg ebook #791. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

https://popplepoetry.com/find/tennyson-princess-the-splendour-falls · popplepoetry.com

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