The Courtship of Miles Standish: And Other Poems

Front Cover
Ticknor and Fields, 1864 - 215 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 126 - The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. Standing on what too long we bore With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, We may discern — unseen before — A path to higher destinies. Nor deem the irrevocable Past As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If, rising on its wrecks, at last To something nobler we attain.
Page 42 - He had attended the sick, with a hand as gentle as woman's ; Somewhat hasty and hot, he could not deny it, and headstrong, Stern as a soldier might be, but hearty, and placable always, Not to be laughed at and scorned, because he was little of stature ; For he was great of heart, magnanimous, courtly, courageous ; Any woman in Plymouth, nay any woman in England, Might be happy and proud to be called the wife of Miles Standish!
Page 165 - I remember the black wharves and the slips, And the sea-tides tossing free ; And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and mystery of the ships, And the magic of the sea. And the voice of that wayward song Is singing and saying still : " A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
Page 167 - Where they in battle died. And the sound of that mournful song Goes through me with a thrill: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
Page 137 - Our little lives are kept in equipoise By opposite attractions and desires ; The struggle of the instinct that enjoys, And the more noble instinct that aspires.
Page 32 - Seated beside her wheel, and the carded wool like a snow-drift Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the ravenous spindle, While with her foot on the treadle she guided the wheel in its motion. Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalmbook of Ainsworth, Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music together, Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in the wall of a churchyard, Darkened and overhung by the running vine of the verses.
Page 9 - Scouring of the White Horse. Or, the Long Vacation Ramble of a London Clerk. By the Author of
Page 177 - Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion, Nor the march of the encroaching city, Drives an exile From the hearth of his ancestral homestead. We may build more splendid habitations, Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures, But we cannot Buy with gold the old associations...
Page 201 - Come to me, O ye children ! And whisper in my ear What the birds and the winds are singing In your sunny atmosphere. For what are all our contrivings, And the wisdom of our books, When compared with your caresses, And the gladness of your looks 1 Ye are better than all the ballads That ever were sung or said ; For ye are living poems, And all the rest are dead.
Page 54 - God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting, Then had sifted the wheat, as the living seed of a nation...

Bibliographic information