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admiration Æschylus alike Arnold assuredly Auguste Vacquerie beauty better Bothwell Byron character Charles Lamb Charles Reade charm claim Coleridge comedy critical crown Dante Darnley dramatic Dryden Elizabeth Emily Brontë England English English poetry equally evidence expression exquisite faith fame feel genius George Eliot grace hand highest honour Hugo humour imagination incomparable inevitable instinct judgment Keats king Lamb Landor least less living Lord Tennyson lyric Mary matter Matthew Arnold memory Milton moral Musset narrative nature never noble Nott once opinion passage passion pathos perfect perhaps phrase pity play poem poet poet's poetic poetry praise prose Queen of Scots reader satire seems sense Shakespeare Shelley Shelley's song spirit student style surely sweet sympathy tender Théophile Gautier things thought tion tragedy tragic truth utterance verse Victor Hugo whole Wither woman word Wordsworth Wordsworthian worthy writer Wuthering Heights
Popular passages
Page 186 - But that I love the gentle Desdemona, I would not my unhoused free condition Put into circumscription and confine For the sea's worth.
Page 183 - I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters...
Page 147 - My apprehensions come in crowds ; I dread the rustling of the grass ; The very shadows of the clouds Have power to shake me as they pass ; I question things, and do not find One that will answer to my mind ; And all the world appears unkind.
Page 245 - I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within himself make pure ! But thou, If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
Page 190 - It may be, that the latter are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley.
Page 252 - O that it were possible we might But hold some two days' conference with the dead ! From them I should learn somewhat I am sure I never shall know here.
Page 167 - Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves such a reward as the noblest dispositions above other things in this life have sometimes preferred: whereof not to be sensible when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, and withal an ungentle and swainish breast.
Page 123 - Will no one tell me what she sings? Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of today? Some natural sorrow, loss or pain, That has been, and may be again!
Page 105 - I have said, for a few short things and single stanzas, his original poetry is less satisfactory than his translations, for in these the subject-matter was found for him. Nay, I doubt whether his delightful Essays and Letters, which deserve to be far more read than they are now, will not resist the wear and tear of time better, and finally come to stand higher, than his poetry.
Page 131 - Laodameia not wholly free from something artificial, and the great Ode not wholly free from something declamatory. If I had to pick out poems of a kind most perfectly to show Wordsworth's unique power, I should rather choose poems such as Michael, The Fountain, The Highland Reaper.