Essay on Language: And Other Papers

Front Cover
Phillips, Sampson, 1857 - 348 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 130 - TO him who in the love of nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware.
Page 27 - Tis Greece, but living Greece no more ! So coldly sweet, so deadly fair, We start, for soul is wanting there. Hers is the loveliness in death, That parts not quite with parting breath...
Page 173 - It reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which Warmed the spring-time of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature, by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings, spreads our sympathies over all classes of society, knits us by new ties with universal being, and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold...
Page 337 - there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance.
Page 173 - Its great tendency and purpose is, to carry the mind beyond and above the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life; to lift it into a purer element, and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion.
Page 171 - Christians than that of man's immortality ; but it is not so generally understood, that the germs or principles of his whole future being are now wrapped up in his soul, as the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary result of this constitution, the soul, possessed and moved by these mighty though infant energies, is perpetually stretching beyond what is present and visible, struggling against the bounds of its earthly prisonhouse, and seeking relief and joy in imaginings of unseen...
Page 321 - Though most unworthy of the name. — A letter forged ! Saint Jude to speed ! Did ever knight so foul a deed ! At first in heart it liked me ill, When the King praised his clerkly skill. Thanks to Saint Bothan, son of mine, Save Gawain, ne'er could pen a line : So swore I, and I swear it still, Let my boy-bishop fret his fill. — Saint Mary mend my fiery mood ! Old age ne'er cools the Douglas blood, I thought to slay him where he stood. 'Tis pity of him too," he cried : " Bold can he speak, and...
Page 174 - We are aware, that it is objected to poetry, that it gives wrong views and excites false expectations of life, peoples the mind with shadows and illusions, and builds up imagination on the ruins of wisdom. That there is a wisdom, against which poetry wars, the wisdom of the senses, which makes physical comfort and gratification the supreme good, and wealth the chief interest of life, we do not deny ; nor do we deem it the least service which poetry renders to mankind, that it redeems them from the...
Page 253 - ... years To push eternity from human thought, And smother souls immortal in the dust ? A soul immortal, spending all her fires, Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness, Thrown into tumult, raptur'd or alarm'd, At aught this scene can threaten or indulge, Resembles ocean into tempest wrought, To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.
Page 26 - He who hath bent him o'er the dead Ere the first day of death is fled, The first dark day of nothingness, The last of danger and distress...

Bibliographic information