Peacock's Four Ages of Poetry: Shelley's Defence of Poetry, Browning's Essay on ShelleyB. Blackwell, 1921 - 112 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
A. H. BULLEN action age of brass age of gold Ages of Poetry Bavius beauty become Bodleian called Celtic nations character colour contained contemporaries creations critical cultivated Dante Defence Bod Defence of Poetry delight divine draft drama effect epic eternal existence expression Forman Four Ages fragment genius harmony Herodotus highest holograph Homer human imagination imitation influence inspired intellectual iron age knowledge language less letters light living Livy Lord Byron manners Mary Shelley melody Memoirs of Shelley Milton mind Miscellany modern moral Muses nature Nonnus objects Odysseus Ollier opinion original Orlando Furioso Paradise Lost passage passion Peacock Peacock's Memoirs PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY perfection Petrarch philosophers Plato pleasure poems poet poet's poetical faculty portion possessed present edition principle printed produced reason relation religion Richard Garnett sense Sidney society songs soul spirit sympathy things thought tion truth universal verse whole words writers wrote
Popular passages
Page 33 - The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as...
Page 53 - Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge ; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought...
Page 54 - Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
Page xix - Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Page 90 - ... cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well-enchanting skill of music; and with a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner...
Page 52 - We have more moral, political, and historical wisdom, than we know how to reduce into practice ; we have more scientific and economical knowledge than can be accommodated to the just distribution of the produce which it multiplies.
Page 30 - Lord Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect ; it is a strain which distends, and then bursts the circumference of the reader's mind, and pours itself forth together with it into the universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy.
Page 56 - ... strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.
Page 105 - Between his old feelings towards Harriet, from whom he was not then separated, and his new passion for Mary, he showed in his looks, in his gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind "suffering, like a little kingdom, the nature of an insurrection".
Page 95 - Then, as we have many wants, and many persons are needed to supply them, one takes a helper for one purpose and another for another; and when these partners and helpers are gathered together in one habitation the body of inhabitants is termed a state.