Select Poems of Thomas Gray

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Harper & brothers, 1886 - English poetry - 143 pages
 

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Page 134 - A stranger yet to pain! I feel the gales, that from ye blow, A momentary bliss bestow, As waving fresh their gladsome wing, My weary soul they seem to soothe, And, redolent of joy and youth, To breathe a second spring.
Page 56 - Fill high the sparkling bowl. The rich repast prepare ; Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast : Close by the regal chair Fell Thirst and Famine scowl A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.
Page 26 - Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood ; Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest ; Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood. Th' applause of listening senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes...
Page 20 - And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight...
Page 44 - Gainst graver hours, that bring constraint To sweeten liberty: Some bold adventurers disdain The limits of their little reign, And unknown regions dare descry: Still as they run they look behind, They hear a voice in every wind, And snatch a fearful joy.
Page 56 - Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. The swarm, that in thy noontide beam were born? Gone to salute the rising morn. Pair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm ; Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.
Page 51 - This pencil take' (she said), 'whose colours clear Richly paint the vernal year: Thine, too, these golden keys, immortal Boy! This can unlock the gates of joy; Of horror that, and thrilling fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.
Page 131 - It may be safely affirmed, that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.
Page 18 - One morn I missed him on the customed hill, Along the heath, and near his favourite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he; 'The next with dirges due in sad array Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne. Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay. Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.
Page 62 - Give ample room and verge enough The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year and mark the night When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death thro...

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