Essays in the Romantic Poets

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Macmillan, 1924 - English poetry - 276 pages

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Page 245 - To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, . Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold ; Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean ; This is not solitude ; 'tis but to hold Converse with nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.
Page 187 - Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide ; The Form remains, the Function never dies ; While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise, We Men, who in our morn of youth defied The elements, must vanish ; — be it -so ! Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour ; And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, We feel that we are greater than we know.
Page 47 - Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower, Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power, Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower, A new Earth and new Heaven, Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud — Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud — We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colours a suffusion from that light.
Page 71 - The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination.
Page 235 - Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
Page 44 - ... Yet well I ken the banks where Amaranths blow, Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. Bloom, O ye Amaranths ! bloom for whom ye may, For me ye bloom not ! Glide, rich streams, away ! With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll : And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul ? WORK WITHOUT HOPE draws nectar in a sieve, And HOPE without an object cannot live.
Page 248 - I have not loved the world, nor the world me ; I have not flatter'd its rank breath, nor bow'd To its idolatries a patient knee, — Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles, — nor cried aloud In worship of an echo ; in the crowd They could not deem me one of such ; I stood Among them, but not of them ; in a shroud Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could, Had I not filed (') my mind, which thus itself subdued.
Page 25 - And what if all of animated nature Be but organic harps diversely framed, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of all?
Page 260 - There is the moral of all human tales ; 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, First Freedom, and then Glory — when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption, — barbarism at last. And History, with all her volumes vast, Hath but one page...
Page 179 - One adequate support For the calamities of mortal life Exists — one only ; an assured belief That the procession of our fate, howe'er Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being Of infinite benevolence and power ; Whose everlasting purposes embrace All accidents, converting them to good.

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