Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more.

These lines are from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Princess” (1847), a long narrative poem framed as a tale told at a country house. In one section, the speaker describes an ideal of womanhood that is outwardly impeccable—polished, orderly, and socially “perfect”—yet emotionally cold and spiritually lifeless. Tennyson wrote “The Princess” amid Victorian debates about women’s education and gender roles; the poem mixes romance, satire, and social commentary. The quoted couplet occurs in a passage that criticizes a kind of cultivated correctness that has lost warmth, spontaneity, and human feeling.

Tennyson compresses a paradox into epigrams: “faultily faultless” suggests a perfection that is itself a defect, while “icily regular” evokes rigid self-control and emotional frigidity. “Splendidly null” intensifies the critique—brilliance without substance, display without inner life. The final phrase, “Dead perfection,” implies that an ideal pursued as flawless form can become inert, incapable of growth, tenderness, or genuine relationship. The couplet functions as a warning against confusing moral or social impeccability with vitality and character: a person (or culture) can be impeccably ordered and yet empty, because real humanity includes irregularity, warmth, and change.