Literature for Beginners: Containing Biographies of the Most Prominent Authors, British and American, with Extracts from Their Writings. Also Gems of Thought, Birthdays of Authors, Pseudonyms, Contemporaneous Writers, Etc

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E.L. Raub & Company, 1883 - 287 pages
 

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Page 164 - TWAS the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse ; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there...
Page 172 - THE groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them — ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems ; in the darkling wood, Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication.
Page 184 - Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's New Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand and the sheep upon the right; And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
Page 273 - Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang, To step aside is human : One point must still be greatly dark, The moving Why they do it ; And just as lamely can ye mark, How far perhaps they rue it. Who made the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us, He knows each chord its various tone, Each spring its various bias : Then at the balance let's be mute, We never can adjust it ; What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted.
Page 207 - The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity: Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew : The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Page 99 - I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.
Page 94 - Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.
Page 162 - Green be the turf above thee, Friend of my better days ! None knew thee but to love thee, Nor named thee but to praise.
Page 188 - Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of, forgotten lore, — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. '"Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door: Only this and nothing more.
Page 182 - Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll ! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

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