Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature, Volume 4

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Boni & Liveright, Incorporated, 1923
 

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Page 44 - For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue.
Page 37 - A SLUMBER did my spirit seal ; I had no human fears : She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force ; She neither hears nor sees ; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Page 44 - These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye : But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart ; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration...
Page 47 - SHE was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn; A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
Page 136 - I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination— What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth— whether it existed before or not...
Page 41 - The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colors and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.
Page 42 - Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them?
Page 39 - Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy soul's immensity ; Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal Mind, — Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths do rest Which we are toiling all our lives to find...
Page 199 - I STROVE with none, for none was worth my strife; Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art; I warmed both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
Page 58 - Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity and consequently may be more accurately contemplated and more forcibly communicated...

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