English Literature of the Nineteenth Century ...

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E.C. & J. Biddle, 1851 - 746 pages

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Page 575 - Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.
Page 561 - I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Page 326 - BLANC, The Arve and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity! 0 dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in...
Page 170 - His steps are not upon thy paths— thy fields Are not a spoil for him— thou dost arise And shake him from thee ; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth — there let him lay.
Page 146 - We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning; By the struggling moonbeam's misty light And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him ; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest With his martial cloak around him.
Page 172 - The sky is changed! — and such a change! Oh night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, 70 And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!
Page 563 - Two of us in the churchyard lie, Beneath the churchyard tree." "You run about, my little maid, Your limbs they are alive; If two are in the churchyard laid, Then ye are only five." "Their graves are green, they may be seen," The little maid replied, "Twelve steps or more from my mother's door, And they are side by side.
Page 172 - Clear, placid Leman ! thy contrasted lake," With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction ; once I loved Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet as if a Sister's voice reproved, That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.
Page 435 - Old Kaspar took it from the boy, Who stood expectant by; And then the old man shook his head, And with a natural sigh, ' 'Tis some poor fellow's skull,' said he, 'Who fell in the great victory.
Page 257 - Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on a foreign strand ? If such there breathe, go, mark him well...

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