Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry, Volume 2

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J. Sharpe, 1810 - English poetry

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Page 114 - ... you get no more of me; And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart, That thus so cleanly I myself can free; Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows, And when we meet at any time again, Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain. Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath, When his pulse failing, passion speechless lies, When faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And innocence is closing up his eyes, — Now if thou would'st, when all have given him over, From...
Page 149 - While from the bounded level of our mind Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind ; But more...
Page 137 - I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this.
Page 214 - The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, And the free maids that weave their thread with bones, Do use to chant it ; it is silly sooth, And dallies with the innocence of love, Like the old age.
Page 116 - CARE-CHARMER Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my languish, and restore the light ; With dark forgetting of my care return. And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth : Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn, Without the torment of the night's untruth. Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires, To model forth the passions of the morrow ; Never let rising sun approve you liars To add more grief to aggravate my...
Page 2 - No endless night, yet not eternal day; The saddest birds a season find to sing, The roughest storm a calm may soon allay: Thus, with succeeding turns, God tempereth all, That man may hope to rise, yet fear to fall.
Page 106 - Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man His annual visit. Half afraid, he first Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor, Eyes all the smiling family askance, And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is; Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs Attract his slender feet.
Page 89 - The turtle to her make hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; The fishes flete with new repaired scale.
Page 65 - Thou wilt not wake Till I thy fate shall overtake; Till age, or grief, or sickness must Marry my body to that dust It so much loves, and fill the room My heart keeps empty in thy tomb. Stay for me there; I will not fail To meet thee in that hollow vale.
Page 113 - I know that all beneath the moon decays, And what by mortals in this world is brought In Time's great periods shall return to nought ; That fairest states have fatal nights and days. I know that all the Muses...

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