Class-book of English poetry, Volume 2

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Page 280 - Hear the sledges with the bells Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight...
Page 344 - It must be so — Plato, thou reason'st well ! — Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality ? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Of falling into nought ? why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction ? 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us ; 'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. Eternity ! thou pleasing, dreadful, thought ! Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes...
Page 301 - I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain when with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.
Page 315 - And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee and arbiter of war, — These are thy toys and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves which mar Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.
Page 300 - Whom mortals call the moon, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, By the midnight breezes strewn ; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof The stars peep behind her and peer ; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees...
Page 299 - 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 noon-day 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.
Page 274 - Eske river where ford there was none ; But, ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented, the gallant came late : For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.
Page 330 - King is come to marshal us, in all his armor drest, And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest. He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye ; He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high. Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing, Down all our line, a deafening shout,
Page 281 - Oh, from out the sounding cells What a gush of euphony voluminously wells ! How it swells ! How it dwells On the Future ! how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells— To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells...
Page 289 - for Aix is in sight! "How they'll greet us!" — and all in a moment his roan Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone; And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, And with circles of red for his eye-sockets

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