An Oration Pronounced at Cambridge: Before the Society of Phi Beta Kappa. August 26, 1824 ...

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O. Everett, 1824 - 67 pages
 

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Page 65 - Westward the course of empire takes its way. The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day. Time's noblest offspring is the last.
Page 45 - And ever against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes, with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running; Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony: That Orpheus...
Page 45 - Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out 140 With wanton heed and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony; That Orpheus...
Page 16 - ... to dive into the depths of dungeons; to plunge into the infection of hospitals; to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries.
Page 64 - ... where the sons of freedom have been immured ; by the noble heads which have been brought to the block; by the wrecks of time, by the eloquent ruins of nations, they conjure us not to quench the light which is rising on the world. Greece cries to us, by the convulsed lips of her poisoned, dying Demosthenes ; and Rome pleads with us in the mute persuasion of her mangled Tully.
Page 63 - ... benignant auspices ; and it certainly rests with us to solve the great problem in human society — to settle, and that forever, the momentous question — whether mankind can be trusted with a purely popular system ? One might almost think, without extravagance, that the departed wise and good, of all places and times, are looking down from their happy seats to witness what shall now be done by us ; that they who lavished their treasures...
Page 30 - No strongly-marked and high-toned literature — poetry, eloquence, or ethics — ever appeared but in the pressure, the din, and crowd of great interests, great enterprises, perilous risks, and dazzling rewards. Statesmen, and warriors, and poets, and orators, and artists, start up under one and the same excitement. They are all branches of one stock. They form, and cheer, and stimulate, and, what is worth all the rest, understand each other ; and it is as truly the sentiment of the student, in...
Page 60 - The better days of life were ours; The worst can be but mine; The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, Shall never more be thine.

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