The Works of Walter Bagehot ...

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Travelers insurance Company, 1891 - English literature

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Page 120 - Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
Page 313 - I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem...
Page 281 - O God ! methinks it were a happy life, To be no better than a homely swain ; To sit upon a hill, as I do now, To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, Thereby to see the minutes how they run, — How many make the hour full complete ; How many hours bring about the day ; How many days will finish up the year ; How many years a mortal man may live.
Page 127 - Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Page 120 - I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness...
Page 131 - Yet if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground ! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world should listen then — as I am listening now.
Page 77 - Love had he found in huts where poor Men lie : His daily Teachers had been Woods and Rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
Page 106 - He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there, All new successions to the forms they wear; Torturing th...
Page 61 - Of thinking too precisely on the event, — A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward, — I do not know Why yet I live to say, "This thing's to do," Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means To do't.
Page 402 - In saffron robe, with taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry; Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream.

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