Essays Upon Authors and Books

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Stanford and Swords, 1849 - 236 pages
 

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Page 83 - Fountain heads, and pathless groves, Places which pale passion loves ! Moonlight walks, when all the fowls Are warmly housed, save bats and owls ! A midnight bell, a parting groan ! These are the sounds we feed upon ; Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley, Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.
Page 69 - Now, therein, of all sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter into it ; nay, he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste you may long to pass farther.
Page 80 - Every thing that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads, and then lay by. In sweet music is such art, Killing care and grief of heart Fall asleep, or hearing die.
Page 69 - And, pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue: even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste; which, if one should begin to tell them the nature of the aloes or rhubarb they should receive, would sooner take their physic at their ears than at their mouth.
Page 67 - Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow in effect another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew, forms such as never were in nature...
Page 70 - Certainly, I must confess my own barbarousness, I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet is it sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style...
Page 67 - Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done, neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too much loved earth more lovely. Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden.
Page 62 - Sir, this is a busy day with us. We cannot hear you; it is Robin Hood's Day."' The parish are gone abroad to gather for Robin Hood. I pray you let them not.
Page 82 - Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights, Wherein you spend your folly : There's nought in this life sweet If man were wise to see't, But only melancholy, O sweetest Melancholy...
Page 73 - But if (fie of such a but !) you be born so near the dull-making cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like music of poetry ; if you have so earth-creeping a mind, that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry, or rather, by a certain rustical disdain, will become such a mome, as to be a Momus of poetry ; then, though I will not wish unto you the ass's ears of Midas, nor to be driven by a poet's verses, as...

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