The Broken Heart

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H. Holt, 1894 - 132 pages

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Page 132 - To the inmost mind, There exercise all his fierce accidents, And on her purest spirits prey, As on entrails, joints, and limbs, With answerable pains, but more intense, Though void of corporal sense.
Page 127 - Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me, Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman. Let's dry our eyes : and thus far hear me, Cromwell; And, when I am forgotten, as I shall be, And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention Of me more must be heard of, say, I taught thee, Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory...
Page xv - I heard The sweetest and most ravishing contention That art and nature ever were at strife in. A sound of music touch'd mine ears, or rather Indeed entranced my soul ; as I stole nearer...
Page 113 - I but deceiv'd your eyes with antick gesture, When one news straight came huddling on another, Of death ! and death ! and death ! still I danced forward ; But it struck home, and here, and in an instant. Be such mere women, who, with shrieks and outcries, Can vow a present end to all their sorrows, Yet live to [court] new pleasures, and outlive them:* They are the silent griefs which cut the heartstrings ; Let me die smiling.
Page 131 - I do not know where to find, in "any play, a catastrophe so grand, so solemn, and so surprising, as in this. This is indeed, according to Milton, to describe high passions and high actions. The fortitude of the Spartan boy, who let a beast gnaw out his bowels till he died, without expressing a groan, is a faint bodily image of this dilaceration of the spirit, and exenteration" of the inmost mind, which Calantha, with a holy violence against lier nature, keeps closely covered, till the last duties...
Page 107 - From this my humble frailty. Cal. To their wisdoms Who are to be spectators of thine end I make the reference : those that are dead Are dead ; had they not now died, of necessity They must have paid the debt they owed to nature One time or other.
Page 67 - Glories Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams And shadows soon decaying : on the stage Of my mortality my youth hath acted Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length ; By varied pleasures sweetened in the mixture, But tragical in issue.
Page 109 - I feel no palsies. On a pair-royal do I wait in death ; My sovereign as his liegeman ; on my mistress, As a devoted servant ; and on Ithocles, As if no brave, yet no unworthy enemy : Nor did I use an engine to entrap His life, out of a slavish fear to combat Youth, strength or cunning;* but for that I durst not Engage the goodness of a cause on fortune, By which his name might have outfaced my vengeance. Oh, Tecnicus, inspired with Phoabus...
Page 113 - Forgive me: now I turn to thee, thou shadow Of my contracted lord ! Bear witness all, I put my mother's wedding-ring upon His finger; 'twas my father's last bequest.
Page 70 - Pen. I must leave the world To revel in Elysium, and 'tis just To wish my brother some advantage here ; Yet, by my best hopes, Ithocles is ignorant Of this pursuit : but if you please to kill him. Lend him one angry look or one harsh word, And you shall soon conclude how strong a power Your absolute authority holds over His life and end.

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