Red-letter Poems by English Men and Women

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T.Y. Crowell, 1885 - English poetry - 648 pages
 

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Page 420 - There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before. To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Page 327 - mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war ! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves ; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. . It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice ! A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw : It was an Abyssinian maid And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me,...
Page 475 - Darkling I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy ! Still would'st thou sing, and I have ears in vain To thy high requiem become a sod.
Page 269 - The floating clouds their state shall lend To her ; for her the willow bend ; Nor shall she fail to see E'en in the motions of the storm Grace that shall mould the maiden's form By silent sympathy. " The stars of midnight shall be dear To her ; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.
Page 179 - One morn I missed him on the customed hill, Along the heath, and near his favourite tree ; Another came : nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he : The next, with dirges due in sad array Slow through the churchway path we saw him borne, — Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay, Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.
Page 52 - With deafning clamours in the slippery clouds, That, with the hurly," death itself awakes ? Can'st thou, O partial sleep ! give thy repose To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude ; And in the calmest and most stillest night, With all appliances and means to boot, Deny it to a king?
Page 455 - Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt, — A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields or waves or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
Page 7 - It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make Man better be ; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere : A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night — It was the plant and flower of Light. In small proportions we just beauties see ; And in short measures life may perfect be.
Page 552 - for Aix is in sight ! " How they'll greet us ! " — and all in a moment his roan Rolled neck and crop over ; lay dead as a stone ; And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim And with circles of red for his eye-sockets
Page 278 - Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But He beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a Mother's mind, And no unworthy aim,...

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