EpipsychidionShelley Society, 1887 - 66 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
A. C. SWINBURNE absolute Beauty Adonais Alastor ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Amid blue BOND STREET breath bright calm cave cavern chidion clear golden prime cloud cold dead Death delight divine dream earth earthly EDITOR'S PREFACE Emilia Viviani Endymion Epipsy eternal faint feel flowers forest glorious grey beak HARVARD COLLEGE heart Heaven human Hymn to Intellectual ideal Beauty imagination isle kisses lampless landscape light living loveliness Maremma measure The world metaphors mingled Moon mountains nature nightshade NOTE ON EPIPSYCHIDION o'er odour passion Pisa Plato pleasure poem poet poetry Primus realised Seraph shadow shape SHAPLEIGH Shelley SIGILL sister sleep smile soft solitude soul would pierce sphere spirit of Beauty splendour Star Storm sweet SWINBURNE tears thee thine thing thou art thought tremble unfortunate Lady Emilia veiled VERE STREET verse vision voice wandering weakness weep wind winged woman wood words youth
Popular passages
Page xlvi - A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift — A love in desolation masked — a power Girt round with weakness ; it can scarce uplift The weight of the superincumbent hour. It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, A breaking billow ; — even whilst we speak Is it not broken ? On the withering flower The killing sun smiles brightly : on a cheek The life can burn in blood even while the heart may break.
Page xxiv - One hope within two wills, one will beneath Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, And one annihilation. Woe is me! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of Love's rare Universe, Are chains of lead around its flight of fire. — I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire! Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet, And say : — 'We are the masters of thy slave; 'What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?
Page 3 - There was a being whom my spirit oft Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn, Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn. Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves Of divine sleep, and on the airlike waves Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor Paved her light steps...
Page 2 - As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The Universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity.
Page 18 - Like flames too pure and light and unimbued To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away : One hope within two wills, one will beneath Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, And one annihilation.
Page xlvi - Midst others of less note came one frail form, A phantom among men, companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell.
Page lxv - Of unentangled intermixture, made By Love, of light and motion : one intense Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing With the unintermitted blood, which there Quivers (as in a fleece of snow-like air The crimson pulse of living morning quiver), Continuously prolonged, and ending never, Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world ; Scarce visible from extreme loveliness.
Page 16 - And wander in the meadows, or ascend The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend With lightest winds, to touch their paramour; Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore, Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy, — Possessing and possessed by all that is Within that calm circumference of bliss, And by each other, till to love and live Be one...
Page lxvi - See where she stands ! a mortal shape indued With love and life and light and deity, And motion which may change but cannot die ; An image of some bright Eternity ; A shadow of some golden dream ; a Splendour Leaving the third sphere pilotless ; a tender Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love Under whose motions life's dull billows move...
Page lxii - Seraph of Heaven ! too gentle to be human, Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman All that is insupportable in thee Of light, and love, and immortality ! Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse ! Veiled glory of this lampless Universe ! Thou Moon beyond the clouds ! thou living Form Among the Dead ! thou Star above the Storm ! Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror...