Mythical Bards and The Life of William Wallace

Front Cover
Harvard University Press, 1920 - Biography & Autobiography - 381 pages
A study of the authorship of the poem ascribed to Blind Harry.

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 225 - And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord? 12 Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.
Page 42 - And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.
Page 94 - Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com'st in such a questionable shape, That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane, O, answer me!
Page 354 - For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue that it should have any character at all of the divine nature; except...
Page 231 - And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. So much the rather thou, celestial Light, Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate ; there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight.
Page 268 - Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact...
Page 3 - In varying cadence, soft or strong, He swept the sounding chords along : The present scene, the future lot, His toils, his wants, were all forgot: Cold diffidence, and age's frost, In the full tide of song were lost ; Each blank, in faithless memory...
Page 272 - ... and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us.
Page 272 - For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed. And as the Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed...
Page 279 - To be no more : sad cure! for who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity., To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion?

Bibliographic information