European Life, Legend, and Landscape

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J. Challen, 1859 - Europe - 154 pages
 

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Page 140 - To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon! thy prison is a holy place, And thy sad floor an altar — for 'twas trod, Until his very steps have left a trace Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, By Bonnivard ! — May none those marks efface ! For they appeal from tyranny to God.
Page 24 - He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again...
Page 139 - Eternal Spirit of the chainless mind ! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty, thou art ; — For there thy habitation is the heart — The heart which love of thee alone can bind ; And when thy sons to fetters are consigned, To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's lame finds wings on every wind.
Page 41 - When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me ; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion ; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow.
Page 42 - Once more upon the waters! yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider.
Page 38 - Life is a jest, and all things show it, I thought so once, but now I know it, with what more you may think proper.
Page 110 - Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career, — His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes ; And fitly may the stranger lingering here Pray for his gallant spirit's bright repose ; For he was Freedom's champion, one of those, The few in number, who had not o'erstept The charter to chastise which she bestows On such as wield her weapons ; he had kept The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept.
Page 41 - I meet with the grief of parents upon a tomb-stone, my heart melts with compassion: when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates...
Page 145 - It is not noon— the Sunbow's rays still arch The torrent with the many hues of heaven, And roll the sheeted silver's waving column O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular, And fling its lines of foaming light along, And to and fro, like the pale courser's tail, The Giant steed, to be bestrode by Death, As told in the Apocalypse.

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