Country Stories

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Saunders and Otley, 1837 - Country life - 326 pages
 

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Page 67 - Hath oftentimes commanded me With my clasped knee to climb : See how well the lusty time Hath decked their rising cheeks in red Such as on your lips is spread ! Here be berries for a queen, Some be red, some be green ; These are of that luscious meat, The great god Pan himself doth eat : All these, and what the woods can yield, The hanging mountain or the field, I freely offer...
Page 68 - Yet I have heard (my mother told it me, And now I do believe it), if I keep My virgin-flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair, No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend, Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves, Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion Draw me to wander after idle fires...
Page 68 - My virgin flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair, No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend, Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves, Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion Draw me to wander after idle fires ; Or voices calling me in dead of night, To make me follow, and so tole me on, Through mire and standing pools, to find my ruin...
Page 65 - And through these thick woods, have I run, Whose bottom never kissed the sun Since the lusty spring began; All to please my master Pan, Have I trotted without rest To get him fruit; for at a feast He entertains, this coming night, His paramour, the Syrinx bright. — But, behold, a fairer sight! By that heavenly form of thine, Brightest fair...
Page 66 - Here be grapes, whose lusty blood Is the learned poet's good, Sweeter yet did never crown The head of Bacchus ; nuts more brown Than the squirrel's teeth that crack them...
Page 66 - Brightest fair, thou art divine, Sprung from great immortal race Of the gods ; for in thy face Shines more awful majesty Than dull weak mortality Dare with misty eyes behold, And live ! Therefore on this mould Lowly do I bend my knee In worship of thy deity. Deign it, goddess, from my hand To receive whate'er this land From her fertile womb doth send Of her choice fruits ; and but lend Belief to that the Satyr tells. fairer by the famous wells, To this present day ne'er grew ; Never better nor more...
Page 67 - And all my fears go with thee ! What greatness, or what private hidden power, Is there in me, to draw submission From this rude man and beast ? sure I am mortal, The daughter of a shepherd ; he was mortal, And she that bore me mortal ; prick my hand, And it will bleed ; a fever shakes me, and The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink, Makes me a-cold : my fear says I am mortal.
Page 66 - By that heavenly form of thine, Brightest fair, thou art divine, Sprung from great immortal race Of the gods, for in thy face Shines more awful majesty Than dull weak mortality. Dare with misty eyes behold, And live: therefore on this mould Lowly do I bend my knee In worship of thy deity.
Page 200 - And there she is at home — for she would not come to meet you — but there she is, hoping to find you just what you were when you went away, and hating Frenchmen, and britschkas, and finery, and the smell of musk, just as if she were my father's daughter in good earnest. And now, dear William, I know what has been passing in your mind, quite as well as if hearts were peep-shows, and one could see to the bottom of them at the rate of a penny a look. I know that you went away for love of Mary, and...
Page 48 - ... was, in some, riven asunder, whilst in others nothing but the mere shell remained, together with here and there a stunted thorn, alone relieving the monotony of the surface. The only regular inhabitant of this dreary scene was, as I have before said, the old labourer, Daniel Thorpe, who slept in one corner of the house, partly to prevent its total dilapidation, and to preserve the valuable hayricks and the tumble-down farm buildings from the pillage to which unprotected property is necessarily...

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