Main Currents of English Literature: A Brief Literary History of the English People

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F.S. Crofts & Company, 1926 - 520 pages

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Page 212 - Peace to all such ! but were there one whose fires True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires; Blest with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, converse, and live with ease; Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne...
Page 142 - Going to the Wars TELL me not, Sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast, and quiet mind, To war and arms I fly. True; a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such, As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.
Page 158 - Is this the region, this the soil, the clime," Said then the lost Archangel, " this the seat That we must change for Heaven? — this mournful gloom For that celestial light ? Be...
Page 212 - Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike...
Page 290 - All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, ' And mountains ; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye and ear, both what they half create *, And what perceive...
Page 219 - How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful, is man! How passing wonder He who made him such, Who centred in our make such strange extremes! From different natures marvellously mixed, Connection exquisite of distant worlds! Distinguished link in being's endless chain! Midway from nothing to the Deity!
Page 320 - Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
Page 214 - Cease then, nor order imperfection name : Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. Know thy own point : This kind, this due degree Of blindness, weakness, heaven bestows on thee. Submit. — In this, or any other sphere, Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear : Safe in the hand of one disposing pow'r, Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
Page 208 - First follow Nature, and your judgment frame By her just standard, which is still the same: Unerring Nature, still divinely bright, One clear, unchang'd, and universal light, Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart, At once the source, and end, and test of Art. Art from that fund each just supply provides, Works without show, and without pomp presides: In some fair body thus th...
Page 154 - So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky...

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