... Tennyson's The Princess

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Longmans, Green, and Company, 1896 - 142 pages

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Page 115 - ... him in the valley ; let the wild Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, That like a broken purpose waste in air : So waste not thou ; but come; for all the vales Await thee ; azure pillars of the hearth Arise to thee; the children call, and I Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound, Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, The moan of doves in immemorial...
Page 117 - For woman is not undevelopt man, But diverse : could we make her as the man, Sweet Love were slain : his dearest bond is this. Not like to like, but like in difference. Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; The man be more of woman, she of man; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; Till at the last she set herself to man, Like perfect music unto...
Page 53 - Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. " Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge ; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Page 113 - Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white ; Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk ; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font : The fire-fly wakens : waken thou with me. Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost, And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars, And all thy heart lies open unto me. Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me. 170 Now folds the lily all her sweetness up, And slips into the bosom of...
Page 124 - The princess thought, that of all sublunary things knowledge was the best : she desired first to learn all sciences, and then proposed to found a college of learned women, in which she would preside, that, by conversing with the old, and educating the young, she might divide her time between the acquisition and communication of wisdom, and raise up for the next age, models of prudence, and patterns of piety.
Page 118 - Yet was there one thro' whom I loved her, one Not learned, save in gracious household ways, Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise...
Page 22 - This world was once a fluid haze of light, Till toward the centre set the starry tides, • And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast The planets : then the monster, then the man ; Tattoo'd or woaded, winter-clad in skins, Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate ; As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here Among the lowest.
Page 52 - The splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Page 19 - The Princess ; liker to the inhabitant Of some clear planet close upon the Sun, Than our man's earth ; such eyes were in her head, And so much grace and power, breathing down From over her arch'd brows, with every turn Lived thro' her to the tips of her long hands, And to her feet.
Page 118 - Happy he With such a mother ! faith in womankind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall He shall not blind his soul with clay.

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