The Republic of Letters: A Selection, in Poetry and Prose, from the Works of the Most Eminent Writers, with Many Original Pieces

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Blackie, 1835

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Page 334 - He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again.
Page 336 - Thy footsteps to a slope of green access Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread; And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, Pavilioning the dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory, doth stand Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath, A field is spread, on which a newer band Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, Welcoming...
Page 336 - Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned Its charge to each; and if the seal is set, Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind. Break it not thou ! too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. What Adonais is, why fear we to become?
Page 335 - And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, And love and life contend in it, for what Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.
Page 140 - The Lord giveth, and the Lord ' taketh away ; blessed be the name of the Lord.
Page 327 - In which suns perished. Others more sublime, Struck by the envious wrath of man or god, Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime ; And some yet live, treading the thorny road Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode. VI. But now thy youngest, dearest one has perished, The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished, And fed with true-love tears instead of dew.
Page 335 - That ages, empires, and religions there Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; For such as he can lend, — they borrow not Glory from those who made the world their prey; And he is gathered to the kings of thought Who waged contention with their time's decay, And of the past are all that cannot pass away.
Page 335 - His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there, All new successions to the forms they wear; Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light.
Page 327 - Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies In darkness? where was lorn Urania When Adonais died? With veiled eyes, 'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise She sate, while one, with soft...
Page 337 - Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as...

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