Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished ( First Time, 1839; Final, 1869)

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Chapman and Hall, 1869
 

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Page 397 - So here hath been dawning Another blue Day: Think wilt thou let it Slip useless away. Out of Eternity This new Day is born ; Into Eternity, At night, will return. Behold it aforetime No eye ever did : So soon it forever From all eyes is hid. Here hath been dawninoAnother blue Day: ' : Think wilt thou let it Slip useless away.
Page 391 - What is Hope? A smiling rainbow Children follow through the wet % Tis not here, still yonder, yonder : Never urchin found it yet. What is Life? A thawing iceboard On a sea with sunny shore ;— Gay we sail; it melts beneath us ; We are sunk, and seen no more. What is Man ? A foolish baby, Vainly strives, and fights, and frets ; Demanding all, deserving nothing;—- One small grave is what he gets.
Page 18 - He has an intellect vehement, rugged, irresistible ; crushing in pieces the hardest problems ; piercing into the most hidden combinations of things, and grasping the most distant: an imagination vague, sombre, splendid, or appalling; brooding over the abysses of Being; wandering through Infinitude, and summoning before us, in its dim religious light, shapes of brilliancy, solemnity, or terror: a fancy of exuberance literally unexampled...
Page 8 - has given to the French the empire of the land, to the ' English that of the sea, to the Germans that of — the 'air!
Page 280 - One chief advantage," said the other, "is its excellent collection of Sacred Books. These stand so happily combined together, that even out of the most diverse elements, the feeling of a whole still rises before us. They are complete enough to satisfy ; fragmentary enough to excite ; barbarous enough to rouse ; tender enough to appease : and for how many other contradicting merits might not these Books, might not this one Book, be praised...
Page 358 - The treasures of his mind are of a similar description with the mind itself; his knowledge is gathered from all the kingdoms of Art, and Science, and Nature, and lies round him in huge unwieldy heaps. His very language is Titanian ; deep, strong, tumultuous ; shining with a thousand hues, fused from a thousand elements, and winding in labyrinthic mazes.
Page 394 - Now steady and sure again, And measure of stroke and step we keep ; Thus up and thus down we cast our grain : Sow well, and you gladly reap. Fall gently and still, good corn, Lie warm in thy earthy bed ; And stand so yellow some morn, For beast and man must be fed.
Page 282 - That last Religion which arises from the Reverence of what is beneath us ; that veneration of the contradictory, the hated, the avoided, we give each of our pupils, in small portions by way of outfit, along with him into the world, merely that he may know where more is to be had, should such a want spring up within him.
Page 176 - Everywhere in life, the true question is, not what we gain, but what we do: so also in intellectual matters, in conversation, in reading, which is more precise and careful conversation, it is not what we receive, but what we are made to give, that chiefly contents and profits us.
Page 27 - When, in your last hour,' says he,* 'when, in your last hour (think of this), all faculty ' in the broken spirit shall fade away and die into inanity, ' — imagination, thought, effort, enjoyment, — then at last ' will the night-flower of Belief alone continue blooming, ' and refresh with its perfumes in the last darkness.

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