The British poets, including translations, Volume 13

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Page 34 - Our two souls, therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show To move, but doth if th
Page 185 - Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing, Happier than the happiest king! All the fields which thou dost see, All the plants belong to thee; All that summer hours produce, Fertile made with early juice. Man for thee does sow and plough; Farmer he, and landlord thou!
Page 242 - Through the soft ways of heaven, and air, and sea, Which open all their pores to thee, Like a clear river thou dost glide. And with thy living stream through the close channels slide. But...
Page 21 - Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost: if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth; if their conceits were far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write on their plan, it was at least necessary to read and think.
Page 140 - If I should tell the politic arts To take and keep men's hearts ; The letters, embassies, and spies, The frowns and smiles and flatteries, The quarrels, tears, and perjuries, (Numberless, nameless mysteries...
Page 23 - As the authors of this race were perhaps more desirous of being admired than understood, they sometimes drew their conceits from recesses of learning not very much frequented by common readers of poetry. Thus Cowley on Knowledge...
Page 21 - Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetic ; for they never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which at once fills the whole mind, and of which the first effect is sudden astonishment, and the second rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are always general, and consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in descriptions not descending to minuteness.
Page 20 - ... wrote rather as beholders than partakers of human nature; as beings looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as Epicurean deities, making remarks on the actions of men, and the vicissitudes of life, without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say what they hoped had been never said before.
Page 19 - Wit, like all other things, subject by their nature to the choice of man, has its changes and fashions, and, at different times, takes different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century, appeared a race of writers, that may be termed the metaphysical poets ; of whom in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not improper to give some account.
Page 31 - That prayer and labour should cooperate, are thus taught by Donne: In none but us are such mix'd engines found, As hands of double office: for the ground We till with them; and them to heaven we raise: Who prayerless labours, or, without this, prays, Doth but one half, that's none.

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