Essays on English Writers

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Sampson Low, Son and Marston, 1880 - Authors - 360 pages

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Page 136 - He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul, All the images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too.
Page 86 - To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong, Within doors or without, still as a fool, In power of others, never in my own ; Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half. O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day 1 O first-created Beam, and thou great Word, " Let there be light, and light was over all...
Page 212 - Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer ; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike; Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike...
Page 212 - Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys : So well-bred spaniels civilly delight In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Page 69 - Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows ; And when we meet at any time again Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain.
Page 99 - It is true that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no further ; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.
Page 309 - Ah! Then, if mine had been the Painter's hand, To express what then I saw, and add the gleam, The light that never was, on sea or land, The consecration, and the Poet's dream; I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile Amid a world how different from this!
Page 211 - Peace to all such ! but were there one whose fires True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires; Blest with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, converse, and live with ease...
Page 86 - To live a life half dead, a living death, And buried; but, O yet more miserable! Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave...
Page 310 - 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. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be ; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me...

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