The English Poets: Lessing, Rousseau: Essays |
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Page 14
... genius , the less we have of it the better . His " Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins , " over which the excellent Lord Hailes went into raptures , is wanting in everything but coarseness ; and if his invention dance at all , it is like a ...
... genius , the less we have of it the better . His " Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins , " over which the excellent Lord Hailes went into raptures , is wanting in everything but coarseness ; and if his invention dance at all , it is like a ...
Page 18
... genius can do that ; and Sternhold and Hopkins are inspired men in comparison with them . For Sternhold was at least the author of two noble stanzas : — " The Lord descended from above And bowed the heavens high , And underneath his ...
... genius can do that ; and Sternhold and Hopkins are inspired men in comparison with them . For Sternhold was at least the author of two noble stanzas : — " The Lord descended from above And bowed the heavens high , And underneath his ...
Page 21
... genius on the shoal of a bad subject . Neither of them could make poetry coalesce with gazetteering or chronicle - making . It was like trying to put a declaration of love into the forms of * Nash , who has far better claims than Swift ...
... genius on the shoal of a bad subject . Neither of them could make poetry coalesce with gazetteering or chronicle - making . It was like trying to put a declaration of love into the forms of * Nash , who has far better claims than Swift ...
Page 25
... genius - that happiest of discoveries ( and not so easy as it might seem ) which puts a man in undisturbed possession of his own individuality . Before his time the boundary between poetry and prose had not been clearly defined . His ...
... genius - that happiest of discoveries ( and not so easy as it might seem ) which puts a man in undisturbed possession of his own individuality . Before his time the boundary between poetry and prose had not been clearly defined . His ...
Page 27
... genius disengaged from those worldly influences which would have disenchanted it of its mystic enthusiasm , if they did In his prose tract on Ireland , Spenser , perhaps with some memory of Ovid in his mind , derives the Irish mainly ...
... genius disengaged from those worldly influences which would have disenchanted it of its mystic enthusiasm , if they did In his prose tract on Ireland , Spenser , perhaps with some memory of Ovid in his mind , derives the Irish mainly ...
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artist beauty become Ben Jonson biography blank-verse called certainly character Châteaubriand Chaucer Coleridge conscious criticism Dante delight divine doth doubt eclogue Edited England English poet Ernest Rhys exquisite eyes Faery Queen fancy feeling French genius German gives Goethe Grasmere Greek Hamlet heart Herr Stahr ideal imagination inspired instinct judgment Keats kind language Latin learned Lessing Lessing's letters literary literature living look Lord Lord Houghton Lyrical Ballads Macbeth Masson matter meaning metrist Milton mind moral nature never original Paradise Lost passage passion perhaps Petrarch phrase play poems poet poetic poetry prose rhyme Rousseau says seems sense sentiment Shakespeare sometimes soul speak Spenser style sure sweet syllable sympathy taste tells temperament thing thought tragedy translation true truth verse Voltaire volume whole William Wordsworth words Wordsworth writing written wrote
Popular passages
Page 112 - This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. BAN. This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed The air is delicate.
Page 75 - To th' instruments divine respondence meet: The silver sounding instruments did meet With the base murmure of the waters fall: The waters fall with difference discreet, Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call: The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.
Page 29 - Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, What hell it is in suing long to bide ; To lose good days that might be better spent ; To waste long nights in pensive discontent ; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow ; To feed on hope ; to pine with fear and sorrow ; To have thy Prince's grace, yet want her peer?
Page 125 - Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change : Thy pyramids built up with newer might To me are nothing novel, nothing strange : They are but dressings of a former sight. Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire What thou dost foist upon us that is old, And rather make them born to our desire, Than think that we before have heard them told. Thy registers and thee I both defy, Not...
Page 168 - Lastly, I should not choose this manner of writing, wherein knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account, but of my left hand.
Page 248 - And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority...
Page 215 - The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure.
Page 289 - In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless...
Page 163 - Hath scathed the forest oaks, or mountain pines, With singed top their stately growth, though bare Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared To speak ; whereat their doubled ranks they bend From wing to wing, and half inclose him round With all his peers : attention held them mute.
Page 191 - THE measure is English heroic verse without rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin, — rime being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre...