Tennyson: A Modern Portrait

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D. Appleton, 1923 - 309 pages
 

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Page 161 - THE baby new to earth and sky, What time his tender palm is prest Against the circle of the breast, Has never thought that " this is I :" But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of "I," and "me," And finds "I am not what I see, And other than the things I touch.
Page 149 - THERE rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen! There where the long street roars, hath been The stillness of the central sea. The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands; They melt like mist, the solid lands, Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
Page 128 - For woman is not undevelopt man, But diverse : could we make her as the man, Sweet Love were slain : his dearest bond is this, Not like to like, but like in difference.
Page 297 - I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for not without dust and heat.
Page 139 - Until they won her; for indeed I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thought, and amiable words And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man.
Page 98 - That lightly rain from ladies' hands. How sweet are looks that ladies bend On whom their favors fall ! For them I battle till the end, To save from shame and thrall : But all my heart is drawn above, My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine : I never felt the kiss of love, Nor maiden's hand in mine.
Page 104 - I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains, Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains ! Mated with a squalid savage — what to me were sun or clime? I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time...
Page 193 - She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airy a tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red.
Page 192 - Ah God, for a man with heart, head, hand, Like some of the simple great ones gone For ever and ever by, One still strong man in a blatant land, Whatever they call him, what care I, Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat — one Who can rule and dare not lie.
Page 279 - What the philosophies, all the sciences, poesy, varying voices of prayer, All that is noblest, all that is basest, all that is filthy with all that is fair ? What is it all, if we all of us end but in being our own corpse-coffins at last?

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