Célébrités anglaises: essais et études biographiques et littéraires

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Firmin-Didot et cie, 1895 - 335 pages
 

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Page 154 - I care not, fortune, what you me deny : You cannot rob me of free nature's grace ; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face ; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave : Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.
Page 55 - Sits on th' horizon round a settled gloom : Not such as wintry storms on mortals shed, Oppressing life; but lovely, gentle, kind, And full of every hope and every joy, The wish of Nature. Gradual sinks the breeze Into a perfect calm, that not a breath Is heard to quiver through the closing woods, Or rustling turn the many-twinkling leaves Of aspen tall. Th' uncurling floods, diffused In glassy breadth, seem through delusive lapse Forgetful of their course.
Page 78 - In vain for him th' officious wife prepares The fire fair-blazing and the vestment warm; In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingling storm, demand their sire, With tears of artless innocence. Alas ! Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold, Nor friends, nor sacred home.
Page 46 - Sans la langue, en un mot, l'auteur le plus divin, Est toujours, quoi qu'il fasse, un méchant écrivain.
Page 75 - Tis brightness all ; save where the new snow melts Along the mazy current. Low the woods Bow their hoar head ; and ere the languid sun, Faint from the west, emits his evening ray, Earth's universal face, deep hid and chill, Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide The works of man.
Page 75 - The fowls of heaven, tamed by the cruel season, crowd around the winnowing store, and claim the little boon which Providence assigns them. One alone, the red-breast, sacred to the household gods, wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, in joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves his shivering mates, and pays to trusted man his annual visit.
Page 63 - The pale descending year, yet pleasing still, A gentler mood inspires; for now the leaf Incessant rustles from the mournful grove, Oft startling such as, studious, walk below, And slowly circles through the waving air.
Page 153 - Nor would he scorn to stoop from high pursuits Of heavenly truth, and practise what she taught, Vain is the tree of knowledge without fruits.
Page 158 - The Earl of Buchan, unwilling that so good a man, and sweet a poet, should be without a memorial, has denoted the place of his interment, for the satisfaction of his admirers, in the year of our Lord 1792.
Page 163 - As those we love decay, we die in part, String after string is sever'd from the heart ; Till loosen'd life at last — but breathing clay, Without one pang, is glad to fall away. Unhappy he who latest feels the blow, Whose eyes have wept o'er every friend laid low, Dragg'd lingering on from partial death to death, Till dying, all he can resign is breath.

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