Text-book of Poetry: From Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns, Beattie, Goldsmith, and Thomson. With Sketches of the Authors' Lives, Notes, and Glossaries. For Use in Schools and Classes

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Ginn Brothers, 1882 - English poetry - 694 pages
Wordsworth's poems, including the Prelude and the Excursion, occupy the treater part of the book (p. 1-503).
 

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Page 94 - Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth ; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear, — both what they half create, And what perceive ; well pleased to...
Page 130 - SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love. A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye ! — Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me...
Page 135 - Three years she grew in sun and shower, Then Nature said, ' A lovelier flower On earth was never sown ; This Child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A Lady of my own. 'Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse : and with me The Girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle or restrain.
Page 93 - Flying from something that he dreads than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all. - I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours 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...
Page 648 - Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay : Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade ; A breath can make them, as a breath has made : But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
Page 79 - EARTH has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will:...
Page 564 - Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme: How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed; How He Who bore in Heaven the second name Had not on earth whereon to lay His head; How His first followers and servants sped; The precepts sage they wrote to many a land; How he, who lone in' Patmos banished, Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand, And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounced by Heaven's command. Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King, The saint, the father, and the husband prays; Hope 'springs...
Page 191 - L'OUVERTURE. TOUSSAINT, the most unhappy Man of Men ! Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough Within thy hearing, or thy head be now Pillowed in some deep dungeon's earless den ; — O miserable Chieftain ! where and when Wilt thou find patience ? Yet die not ; do thou Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow : Though fallen Thyself, never to rise again, Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind Powers that will work for thee ; air, earth, and skies ; There's not a breathing of the common...
Page 134 - 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 waylay. I saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a Woman too! Her household motions light and free, And steps of...
Page 250 - What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind...

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