Lectures and essays on various subjects, historical, topographical, and artistic

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Page 127 - As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on; and yet, within a month, Let me not think on't: Frailty, thy name is woman!
Page 16 - The other Shape — If shape it might be called that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb ; Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, For each seemed either — black it stood as Night, 670 Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, And shook a dreadful dart : what seemed his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Page 300 - JAMES, by the grace of God, king of England, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith; and of Scotland the seven and fortieth.
Page 14 - He scarce had ceased, when the superior fiend Was moving toward the shore ; his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast ; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening from the top of Fesole Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.
Page 58 - There is an old tale goes, that Herne the hunter, Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest, Doth all the winter time, at still midnight, Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns ; And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle; And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain In a most hideous and dreadful manner...
Page 14 - Less than archangel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured ; as when the sun, new risen, Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.
Page 120 - The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up ; old things were passing away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the old world were passing away, never to return.
Page 169 - In Cumnor Hall so lone and drear ; And many a heartfelt sigh she heaved, And let fall many a bitter tear.
Page 168 - I attributed the effect to the great heat of the sun, the perfect dryness of the clear air through which I moved, and the deep stillness of all around us ; it seemed to me that these causes, by occasioning a great tension and consequent susceptibility of the hearing organs, had rendered them liable to tingle under the passing touch of some mere memory that must have swept across my brain in a moment of sleep.
Page 165 - Oft on a plat of rising ground, I hear the far-off curfew sound, Over some wide-watered shore, Swinging slow with sullen roar ; Or if the air will not permit, Some still removed place will fit, Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom...

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