The Ladies' Reader: Designed for the Use of Ladies' Schools and Family Reading Circles; Comprising Choice Selections from Standard Authors, in Prose and Poetry; with the Essential Rules of Elocution, Simplified and Arranged for Strictly Practical Use

Front Cover
E. H. Butler & Company, 1860 - Readers - 425 pages

From inside the book

Contents

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 60 - 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 264 - thing of evil - prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.
Page 346 - Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, And for thy maintenance commits his body To painful labour both by sea and land...
Page 111 - Haste thee nymph and bring with thee Jest and youthful jollity, Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles. Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled care derides. And laughter holding both his sides.
Page 57 - Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest, The young fawns are playing with the shadows, The young flowers are blowing toward the west But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly ! They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free.
Page 408 - 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 149 - 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.
Page 61 - 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 304 - Then from those cavernous eyes Pale flashes seemed to rise, As when the Northern skies Gleam in December; And, like the water's flow Under December's snow, Came a dull voice of woe From the heart's chamber. "I was a Viking old! My deeds, though manifold, No Skald in song has told, No Saga taught thee! Take heed that in thy verse Thou dost the tale rehearse, Else dread a dead man's curse; For this I sought thee.
Page 127 - As unto the bow the cord is, So unto the man is woman ; Though she bends him, she obeys him, Though she draws him, yet she follows ; Useless each without the other...

Bibliographic information