Rienzi: an aesthetic and historical poem

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Page 97 - There, far up among its limestone crags, in a spot scarcely accessible to human foot, the peasants of the valley point out to the traveller the black mouth of a cavern, and tell him that within Barbarossa lies amid his knights in an enchanted sleep, waiting the hour when the ravens shall cease to hover round the peak, and the pear-tree [shall] blossom in the valley, to descend with his Crusaders and bring back to Germany the golden age of peace and strength and unity.
Page 93 - In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish ; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold masterly hand ; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies whenever we oppress and persecute.
Page 94 - And forage in the fields of light and love. Sweet hope! Kind cheat! Fair fallacy! By thee We are not Where nor What we be, But What and Where we would be. Thus art thou Our absent Presence and our future Now.
Page 83 - Tis unnatural, Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last A falcon towering in her pride of place Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.
Page 79 - There are infinite reveries, numberless extravagances, and a perpetual train of vanities which pass through both. The great difference is, that the first knows how to pick and cull his thoughts for conversation, by suppressing some, and communicating...
Page 79 - Urbs antiqua fuit, Tyrii tenuere coloni, Carthago, Italiam contra Tiberinaque longe Ostia, dives opum studiisque asperrima belli...
Page 84 - Lo ! these were they, whose souls the Furies steel'd, And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield. Thus unlamented pass the proud away, The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day ! So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow For others good, or melt at others woe.
Page 85 - Yet as the soul is all in every part, So God and he might each have all her heart. So had her children too; for charity Was not more fruitful, or more kind than she: Each under other by degrees they grew; A goodly perspective of distant view.
Page 78 - ... by them, as in matters of good and evil, so far as these qualities relate to, and affect the actions of, men : a thing certainly of a most fatal and pernicious import. For though, in matters of mere speculation, it is not much the concern of society, whether or no men proceed wholly upon trust, and take the bare word of others for what they assent to ; since it is not much material to the welfare either...
Page 73 - The truth is that the stable part of our mental, moral, and physical constitution is the largest part of it, and the resistance it opposes to change is such that, though the variations of human society in a portion of the world are plain enough, they are neither so rapid nor so extensive that their amount, character, and general direction cannot be ascertained.

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