The Works of Mary Russell Mitford: Prose and Verse, Viz. Our Village, Belford Regis, Country Stories, Finden's Tableaux, Foscari, Julian, Rienzi, Charles the First

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Crissy & Markley, 1846 - English literature - 672 pages

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Page 63 - O good old man ; how well in thee appears The constant service of the antique world, When service sweat for duty, not for meed...
Page 40 - To glorify their Tempe, bred in me Desire of visiting that paradise. To Thessaly I came ; and living private, Without acquaintance of more sweet companions Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts, I day by day frequented silent groves, And solitary walks. One morning early This accident encountered me: I heard The sweetest and most ravishing contention, That art and nature ever were at strife in.
Page 394 - O thou, whose mighty palace roof doth hang From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness; Who lov'st to see the hamadryads dress Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken; And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken The dreary melody of bedded reeds — In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth; Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx...
Page 30 - ... like a young Diana, and a bounding, skimming, enjoying motion, as if native to the element, which might have become a Naiad. I have seen her on the topmost round of a ladder, with one foot on the roof of a house, flinging down the grapes that no one else had nerve enough to reach, laughing, and garlanded, and crowned with vine leaves, like a Bacchante. But the prettiest combination of circumstances under which I ever saw her, was driving a donkey cart up a hill one sunny windy day, in September.
Page 30 - Imagine the astonishment caused by this intelligence amongst us all; for I myself, though admiring the untaught damsel almost as much as I loved her, should certainly never have dreamed of her as a teacher. However, she remained in the rich baronet's family where she had commenced her vocation.
Page 394 - Thou, to whom every faun and satyr flies For willing service ; whether to surprise The squatted hare while in half-sleeping fit ; Or upward ragged precipices flit To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw ; Or by mysterious enticement draw Bewildered shepherds to their path again ; Or to tread breathless round the frothy main, And gather up all fancifullest shells For thee to tumble into Naiads...
Page 14 - Come, May !' and up she springs as light as a bird. The road is gay now; carts and postchaises, and girls in red cloaks, and, afar off, looking almost like a toy, the coach. It meets us fast and soon. How much happier the walkers look than the riders — especially the frost-bitten gentleman, and the shivering lady with the invisible face, sole passengers of that commodious machine!
Page 48 - Behind these sallows, in a nook between them and the hill, rose the uncouth and shapeless cottage of Tom Cordery. It is a scene which hangs upon the eye and the memory, striking, grand, almost sublime, and above all eminently foreign. No English painter would choose such a subject for an English landscape ; no one in a picture would take it for English. It might pass for one of those scenes which have furnished models to Salvator Rosa. Tom's cottage was, however, very thoroughly national and characteristic...
Page 8 - The tidy, square, red cottage on the right hand, with the long well-stocked garden by the side of the road, belongs to a retired publican from a neighbouring town ; a substantial person with a comely wife...
Page 41 - Alas, poor creature, I will soon revenge This cruelty upon the author of it. Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood, Shall never more betray a harmless peace To an untimely end ;" and in that sorrow, As he was pashing it against a tree, I suddenly stept in.

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