Childe Harold's pilgrimage

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Page 209 - I STOOD in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand ; I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand : A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles...
Page 256 - And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder-shower ; and now The arena swims around him— he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won. He heard it, but he heeded not— his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away...
Page 181 - The sky is changed ! — and such a change ! Oh night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman ! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder ! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!
Page 57 - But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless...
Page 175 - I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me ; and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture...
Page 255 - I see before me the Gladiator lie : (59) He leans upon his hand — his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his droop'd head sinks gradually low — And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder-shower ; and now The arena swims around him — he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won.
Page 151 - Tis to create, and in creating live A being more intense, that we endow With form our fancy, gaining as we give The life we image, even as I do now.
Page 158 - Cameron's gathering" rose, The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills Have heard,— and heard, too, have her Saxon foes; How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills Their...
Page 183 - Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul To make these felt and feeling, well may be Things that have made me watchful ; the far roll Of your departing voices is the knoll Of what in me is sleepless — if I rest. But where of ye, O tempests, is the goal ? Are ye like those within the human breast? Or do ye find at length, like eagles, some high nest?
Page 236 - Eureka !" it is clear— When but some false mirage of ruin rises near. LXXXII. Alas ! the lofty city ! and alas ! The trebly hundred triumphs ! (42) and the day When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away ! Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay, And Livy's pictured page! — but these shall be Her resurrection ; all beside— decay. Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free!

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