Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge

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Harper & brothers, 1836 - Critics - 266 pages

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Page 95 - Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
Page 22 - But now afflictions bow me down to earth: Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth ; But oh! each visitation Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, My shaping spirit of Imagination.
Page 95 - Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed.
Page 74 - The outward shows of sky and earth, Of hill and valley, he has viewed; And impulses of deeper birth Have come to him in solitude. In common things that round us lie Some random truths he can impart, — The harvest of a quiet eye That broods and sleeps on his own heart.
Page 145 - Fie, fie upon her ! There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks ; her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body.
Page 106 - No common centre Man, no common sire Knoweth ! A sordid solitary thing, 'Mid countless brethren with a lonely heart Through courts and cities the smooth savage roams Feeling himself, his own low self, the whole ; When he by sacred sympathy might make The whole one self! self that no alien knows ! Self, far diffused as Fancy's wing can travel ! Self, spreading still! Oblivious of its own, Yet all of all possessing...
Page 241 - License they mean when they cry Liberty ; For who loves that must first be wise and good : But from that mark how far they rove we see, For all this waste of wealth and loss of blood.
Page 107 - Who, with a toward or untoward lot, Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not — Plays, in the many games of life, that one Where what he most doth value must be won: Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, Nor thought of tender happiness betray; Who, not content that former worth stand fast, Looks forward, persevering to the last, From well to better, daily self-surpast...
Page 162 - I now hold the pen for my Lord Bolingbroke, who is reading your letter between two haycocks; but his attention is somewhat diverted, by casting his eyes on the clouds, not in admiration of what you say, but for fear of a shower.
Page 172 - I loved you almost twenty years ago ; I thought of you as well as I do now ; better was beyond the power of conception ; or, to avoid an equivoque, beyond the extent of my ideas.

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