The White Hills: Their Legends, Landscape, and Poetry

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William F. Gill, 1876 - White Mountains (N.H. and Me.) - 403 pages

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Page 6 - Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear More sweet than all the landscape smiling near ?— 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
Page 287 - Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water: thou preparest them corn, when thou hast so provided for it.
Page 166 - Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
Page 86 - And what is so rare as a day in June ? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays : Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten ; Every clod feels a stir of might. An instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers...
Page 56 - The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.
Page 87 - The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; He sings to the wide world and she to her nest, — In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best...
Page 148 - That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls To roll the torrent out of dusky doors. But follow; let the torrent dance thee down To find him in the valley; let the wild Lean-headed eagles yelp alone, and leave The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, That like a broken purpose waste in air. So waste not thou, but come; for all the vales Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth 25 Arise to thee; the children call, and I Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet...
Page 123 - Hence, loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings And the night-raven sings; There under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
Page 394 - The immeasurable height Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, The stationary blasts of waterfalls, And in the narrow rent, at every turn, Winds thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn...
Page 170 - I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeam dance Against my sandy shallows. I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses: I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses ; And out again I curve and flow To join the brimming river. For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.

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