The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry, Volume 2

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William Blackwood and Sons, 1887 - English poetry
 

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Page 47 - I care not, fortune, what you me deny ; You cannot rob me of free nature's grace ; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face, You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve : Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave : Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.
Page 214 - The hand of the reaper Takes the ears that are hoary, But the voice of the weeper Wails manhood in glory. The autumn winds rushing Waft the leaves that are searest, But our flower was in flushing, When blighting was nearest.
Page 274 - Above me are the Alps, The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And throned Eternity in icy halls Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls The avalanche — the thunderbolt of snow ! All that expands the spirit, yet appals, Gather around these summits, as to show How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below, LXIII.
Page 65 - In lowly dale, fast by a river's side, With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round, A most enchanting wizard did abide, Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.
Page 90 - Sweet bird ! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear ; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year...
Page 132 - WEE, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r, Thou's met me in an evil hour ; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem : To spare thee now is past my pow'r, Thou bonnie gem. Alas ! it's no thy neebor sweet, The bonnie lark, companion meet, Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, Wi' spreckl'd breast, When upward-springing, blythe to greet The purpling east.
Page 107 - O how canst thou renounce the boundless store Of charms which Nature to her votary yields ? The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields...
Page 53 - Sits on th' horizon round a settled gloom : Not such as wintry storms on mortals shed, Oppressing life; but lovely, gentle, kind, And full of every hope and every joy, The wish of Nature. Gradual sinks the breeze Into a perfect calm, that not a breath Is heard to quiver through the closing woods, Or rustling turn the many-twinkling leaves Of aspen tall. Th' uncurling floods, diffused In glassy breadth, seem through delusive lapse Forgetful of their course.
Page 202 - The western waves of ebbing day Rolled o'er the glen their level way; Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed in floods of living fire. But not a setting beam could glow Within the dark ravines below, Where twined the path in shadow hid, Round many a rocky pyramid, Shooting abruptly from the dell Its thunder-splintered pinnacle...
Page 122 - JEolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident; or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities: a God that made all things, man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave.

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