Essays Chiefly on Poetry, Volume 1Macmillan and Company, 1887 - English essays |
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Common terms and phrases
admirable affirms aspirations beauty belongs Belphoebe blended Book breath canto character characteristic chiefly cloud delight descriptive divine doth drama dream Duke of Bourbon earth face faculty Faery Queen fair faith fear flowers French Revolution genius gods goodly grace grave happy harmony Hartley Coleridge hath heart heaven higher human ideal illustrated images imagination inspiration instinct intellectual knight Laodamia less Liberty light live look Lucretius man's mighty mind moral mountain Nature Nature's never Ode to Duty once pain pass passages passion pathos peace Philip van Artevelde poem poet poet affirms poet's poetic political Protesilaus reader regarded scene seemed sense song sonnet sorrow soul Spenser's philosophy Spenser's poetry spirit stanza sweet sympathy thee theme things thou thought Tintern Abbey Toussaint L'Ouverture true truth virtue vision voice William Rowan Hamilton wisdom wise Words Wordsworth's poetry worth's youth
Popular passages
Page 188 - Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
Page 111 - She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love : A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky.
Page 90 - As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie Couched on the bald top of an eminence; Wonder to all who do the same espy, By what means it could thither come, and whence; So that it seems a thing endued with sense: Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself...
Page 188 - O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!
Page 195 - I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely ; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy ; for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea.
Page 103 - tis surely blind. But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer, And frequent sights of what is to be borne ! Such sights, or worse, as are before me here. — Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.
Page 187 - Heaven lies about us in our infancy. Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy; But he beholds the light and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy. The youth who daily farther from the East Must travel, still is Nature's priest, And, by the vision splendid, Is on his way attended. At length the man perceives it die away And fade into the light of common day.
Page 117 - Wisdom and spirit of the universe ! Thou soul that art the eternity of thought, That givest to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion, not in vain By day or star-light thus from my first dawn Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me The passions that build up our human soul...
Page 149 - It is not to be thought of that the flood Of British freedom, which, to the open sea ..:"- Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity Hath flowed, " with pomp of waters unwithstood...
Page 90 - I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride; Of Him who walked in glory and in joy Following his plough, along the mountain-side : By our own spirits are we deified : We poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.