The Works of Mrs. Hemans: With a Memoir of Her Life, Volume 1

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W. Blackwood and Sons, 1857
 

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Page 163 - Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. To Be, contents his natural desire, He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire; But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Page 64 - His steps are not upon thy paths— thy fields Are not a spoil for him— thou dost arise And shake him from thee ; the vile strength he wields For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth — there let him lay.
Page 20 - And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have ; but, in their stead, Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
Page 285 - Fear no more the frown o' the great, Thou art past the tyrant's stroke; Care no more to clothe, and eat; To thee the reed is as the oak: The sceptre, learning, physic, must All follow this, and come to dust.
Page 189 - Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard Celestial voices, to the midnight air, Sole, or responsive...
Page 249 - In darkness, and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart, How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer thro' the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee!
Page 12 - She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely Apparition sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn; A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay. I saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a Woman too! Her household motions light and...
Page 43 - The noble motto for all the proceedings of the old Welsh bards, — " In the face of the sun, and in the eye of light," was one completely after her own heart, and in perfect accordance with the transparent guilelessness of a character to which the conventional insincerities of every-day life were so unutterably distasteful. It is, indeed, impossible to insist too much upon this peculiar characteristic, which, rendering her as unsuspicious of evil thoughts in others, as she was incapable of them...
Page 263 - ... industry a great blessing — and a great blessing it is to have kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives ; but that the greatest of all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a Christian.
Page 289 - How many blessed groups this hour are bending, Through England's primrose meadow-paths, their way Toward spire and tower, 'midst shadowy elms ascending, Whence the sweet chimes proclaim the hallow'd day! The halls, from old heroic ages grey, Pour their fair children forth; and hamlets low, With whose thick orchard blooms the soft winds play, VOL.

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