Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems

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Sam'l Colman, 1837 - 264 pages
 

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Page 46 - Some say, he bid his angels turn askance The poles of earth, twice ten degrees and more, From the sun's axle ; they with labour push'd Oblique the centric globe.
Page 41 - Lets in new light through chinks that time has made. Stronger by weakness, wiser men become, As they draw near to their eternal home : Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view, That stand upon the threshold of the new.
Page 119 - If, in the third place, we look into the profession of physic, we shall find a most formidable body of men. The sight of them is enough to make a man serious, for we may lay it down as a maxim, that when a nation abounds in physicians, it grows thin of people. Sir William Temple is very much puzzled to find out a reason why the Northern Hive, as he calls it, does not send out such prodigious swarms, and overrun the world with Goths and Vandals, as it did formerly; but had that excellent author observed...
Page 72 - Chaos heard the potent word ; Through all his realms the kindling ether runs, And the mass starts into a million suns ; Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst, And second planets issue from the first ; Bend, as they journey with projectile force, In bright ellipses their reluctant course ; Orbs wheel in orbs, round centres centres roll, And form, self-balanced, one revolving whole. — Onward they move amid their bright abode, Space without bound, the bosom of their God...
Page 65 - ... all matters lighter than the central parts of that air, and immersed in it, would recede from the centre, and rise till they arrived at that region of the air which was of the same specific gravity with themselves, where they would rest ; while other matter, mixed with the lighter air, would descend, and the two meeting would form the shell of the first earth, leaving the upper atmosphere nearly clear.
Page 64 - Such changes in the superficial parts of the globe, seemed to me unlikely to happen, if the earth were solid to the centre. I therefore imagined that the internal parts might be a fluid more dense, and of greater specific gravity than any of the solids we are acquainted with ; which therefore might swim in or upon that fluid. Thus the surface of the globe would be a shell, capable of being broken and disordered by the violent movements of the fluid on which it rested.
Page 41 - The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd, Lets in new light through chinks which time has made 1.
Page 39 - I wish it were possible, from this instance, to invent a method of embalming drowned persons in such a manner that they may be recalled to life at any period, however distant ; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence...
Page 216 - O what cruel deceits will sin land us in ! and how artfully it pleads for a " little more sleep, and a little more slumber; a little more folding of the hands to sleep.
Page 91 - The worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out. And sported his eyes and his temples about.

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