Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: A Romaunt

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J. Murray, 1859 - 329 pages
 

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Page 259 - I see before me the Gladiator lie : He leans upon his hand — his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his droop'd head sinks gradually low — And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now The arena swims around him — he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won.
Page 279 - 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 Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean— roll!
Page 134 - twas but the wind, Or the car rattling o'er the stony street; On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet.— But hark!
Page 167 - Clear, placid Leman ! thy contrasted lake, With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction ; once I loved Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet as if a Sister's voice reproved, That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.
Page 279 - His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields Are not a spoil for him, — thou dost arise And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray And howling, to his gods, where haply lies His pretty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth: — there let him lay.
Page 206 - Fill'd with the face of heaven, which, from afar, Comes down upon the waters ; all its hues, From the rich sunset to the rising star, Their magical variety diffuse : And now they change ; a paler shadow strews Its mantle o'er the mountains ; parting day Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues With a new colour as it gasps away, The last still loveliest, till — 'tis gone — and all is gray.
Page 170 - Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between Heights which appear as lovers who have parted In hate, whose mining depths so intervene, That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted ; Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted, Love was the very root of the fond rage Which blighted their life's bloom, and then departed : Itself expired, but leaving them an age Of years all winters, — war within themselves to wage.
Page 203 - And slight withal may be the things which bring Back on the heart the weight which it would fling Aside for ever: it may be a sound — A tone of music, — summer's eve — or spring, A flower — the wind — the Ocean — which shall wound, Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound...
Page 137 - Cameron's gathering' rose, The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes: — How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers With the fierce native daring which instils The stirring memory of a thousand years, And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clansman's ears!
Page 168 - He is an evening reveller, who makes His life an infancy, and sings his fill; At intervals, some bird from out the brakes Starts into voice a moment, then is still. There seems a floating whisper on the hill, But that is fancy, for the starlight dews All silently their tears of love instil, Weeping themselves away, till they infuse Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her hues.

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