A Compendium of English Literature, Chronologically Arranged from Sir John Mandeville to William Cowper: Consisting of Biographical Sketches of the Authors, Selections from Their Works, with Notes, Explanatory, Illustrative, and Directing to the Best Editions and to Various Criticisms ...

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E.C. & J. Biddle, 1854 - 776 pages
 

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Page 170 - SINCE there's no help, come let us kiss and part. Nay, I have done, you get no more of me! And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart, That thus so cleanly I myself can free. Shake hands for ever! Cancel all our vows! And when we meet at any time again, Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain. Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath, When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies, When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And Innocence is closing up his...
Page 139 - Love thyself last ; cherish those hearts that hate thee : Corruption wins not more than honesty. Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not : Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, Thy God's and truth's; then, if thou fall'st, O Cromwell, Thou fall'st a blessed martyr.
Page 251 - Tunes her nocturnal note: thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine...
Page 595 - Th' applause of listening senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes Their lot forbade ; nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind...
Page 135 - The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Page 521 - How sleep the Brave who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blest! When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, Returns to deck their hallowed mould, She there shall dress a sweeter sod Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. By fairy hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall awhile repair, To dwell a weeping hermit there!
Page 129 - All the images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.
Page 596 - Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply : And many a holy text around she strews That teach the rustic moralist to die. For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er...
Page 244 - Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear Compels me to disturb your season due ; For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. Who would not sing for Lycidas ? he knew 10 Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
Page 243 - The oracles are dumb, No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance, or breathed spell, Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

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