The Irish Nation: Its History and Its Biography, Volume 1

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A. Fullarton, 1876 - Ireland

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Page 674 - Canace to wife, That owned the virtuous ring and glass, And of the wondrous horse of brass On which the Tartar king did ride; And if aught else great bards beside In sage and solemn tunes have sung, Of turneys, and of trophies hung, Of forests, and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets the ear.
Page 671 - To have thy asking, yet wait many years; To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares; To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs; To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.
Page 672 - And blesses her with his two happy hands, How the red roses flush up in her cheeks, And the pure snow with goodly vermeil stain, Like crimson dyed in grain...
Page 679 - ... by an Historiographer should be the twelfth booke, which is the last; where I devise that the Faery Queene kept her Annuall feaste xii.
Page 6 - Irish language; but the world still remains as it was, doubtful and ignorant. What the Irish language is in itself, and to what languages it has affinity, are very interesting questions, which every man wishes to see resolved that has any philological or historical curiosity. Dr. Leland begins his history too late; the ages which deserve an exact inquiry are those times (for such there were) when Ireland was the school of the west, the quiet habitation of sanctity and literature.
Page 678 - The generall end therefore of all the booke is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline...
Page 678 - I labour to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private morall vertues, as Aristotle hath devised...
Page 448 - Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death ; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves...
Page 675 - To us, my friend, the times that are gone by Are a mysterious book, sealed with seven seals: That which you call the spirit of ages past Is but, in truth, the spirit of some few authors In which those ages are beheld reflected, "With what distortion strange heaven only knows.
Page 679 - For the methode of a poet historical is not such as of an historiographer. For an historiographer discourseth of affayres orderly as they were donne, accounting as well the times as the actions; but a poet thrusteth into the middest, even where it most concerneth him, and there recoursing to the thinges forepaste, and divining of thinges to come, maketh a pleasing analysis of all.

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