Contributions of physicians to English and American literature

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G.S. Davis, 1892 - 93 pages

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Page 70 - And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel ; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease ; For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.
Page 79 - This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main; The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming Lair.
Page 18 - What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.
Page 56 - But me, not destined such delights to share, My prime of life in wandering spent and care ; Impell'd, with steps unceasing, to pursue Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view; That, like the circle bounding earth and skies, Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies ; My fortune leads to traverse realms alone, And find no spot of all the world my own.
Page 21 - Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twentyseven names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century.
Page 70 - Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Page 18 - Had they made as good provision for their names as they have done for their relics, they had not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes, which in the oblivion of names, persons, times, and sexes have found unto themselves a fruitless continuation, and only arise unto late posterity as emblems of mortal vanities, antidotes against pride, vainglory, and madding vices!
Page 19 - To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time are providentially taken off from such imaginations; and, being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted...
Page 78 - The wild flowers who will stoop to number ? A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them ; — Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them I Nay, grieve not for the dead alone Whose song has told their hearts...
Page 25 - divinity in us ; something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun. Nature tells me, I am the image of God, as well as Scripture. He that understands not thus much hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man.

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