Rhyme and Reason: Modern Formal Poetry: An Anthology

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Neil Harding McAlister, 2006 - Poetry - 160 pages

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Page 12 - And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor: And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted — nevermore...
Page 13 - Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.
Page 13 - All sounds, all colours, all forms, either because of their pre-ordained energies or because of long association, evoke indefinable and yet precise emotions, or, as I prefer to think, call down among us certain disembodied powers, whose footsteps over our hearts we call emotions...
Page 20 - HERE in this leafy place Quiet he lies, Cold, with his sightless face Turned to the skies • 'Tis but another dead ; All you can say is said. Carry his body hence, — Kings must have slaves ; Kings climb to eminence Over men's graves : So this man's eye is dim ; — Throw the earth over him. What was the white you touched, There, at his side ? Paper his hand had clutched Tight ere he died ; — Message or wish, may be ; — Smooth the folds out and see.
Page 13 - The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation, by hushing us with an alluring monotony, while it holds us waking by its variety, to keep us in that state of perhaps real trance, in which the mind liberated from the pressure of the will is unfolded in symbols.
Page 22 - Snowy dove-like pinions spread, And a starlike light was shining In a Glory round his head. While, with tender love, the angel, Leaning o'er the little nest, In his arms the sick child folding, Laid him gently on his breast, Sobs and wailings told the mother That her darling was at rest.
Page 16 - ... our little memories are but a part of some great Memory that renews the world and men's thoughts age after age, and that our thoughts are not, as we suppose, the deep, but a little foam upon the deep.
Page 13 - ... when sound, and colour, and form are in a musical relation, a beautiful relation to one another, they become as it were one sound, one colour, one form, and evoke an emotion that is made out of their distinct evocations and yet is one emotion.
Page 20 - Smooth the folds out and see. Hardly the worst of us Here could have smiled !Only the tremulous Words of a child ; — Prattle, that has for stops Just a few ruddy drops. Look. She is sad to miss, Morning and night, His — her dead father's — kiss ; Tries to be bright, Good to mamma, and sweet. That is all. "Marguerite.
Page 16 - Any one who has any experience of any mystical state of the soul knows how there float up in the mind profound symbols,1 whose meaning, if indeed they do not delude one into the dream that they are meaningless, one does not perhaps understand for years.

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