First Loves: With Sketches of the Poets ...

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S.M. Kennedy, 1867 - 502 pages

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Page 143 - I STOOD in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs ; A palace and a prison on each hand : I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand : A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles...
Page 130 - OF all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Page 186 - He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.
Page 143 - KNOW ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime...
Page 150 - She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airy a tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red.
Page 122 - He had lived for his love, for his country he died — They were all that to life had entwined him ; Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried, Nor long will his love stay behind him ! Oh ! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest, When they promise a glorious morrow ; They'll shine o'er her sleep, like a smile from the west. From her own loved island of sorrow !
Page 122 - She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers around her are sighing : But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps. For her heart in his grave is lying.
Page 121 - OH! BREATHE NOT HIS NAME. OH ! breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade, Where cold and unhonour'd his relics are laid ; Sad, silent, and dark, be the tears that we shed, As the night-dew that falls on the grass o'er his head. But the night-dew that falls, though in silence it weeps, Shall brighten with verdure the grave where he sleeps ; And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls, Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.
Page 156 - God Almighty, blessed Saviour, Thou That didst uphold me on my lonely isle, Uphold me, Father, in my loneliness A little longer ! aid me, give me strength Not to tell her, never to let her know.
Page 133 - Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state: From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: Or who could suffer being here below? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.

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