The works of the English poets. With prefaces, biographical and critical, by S. Johnson, 45. köide

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Page 53 - See, a long race thy spacious courts adorn; See future sons, and daughters yet unborn, In crowding ranks on every side arise, Demanding life, impatient for the skies ! See barbarous nations at thy gates attend, Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend...
Page 111 - Our sons their fathers' failing language see, And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be. So when the faithful pencil has design'd Some bright idea of the master's mind, Where a new world leaps out at his command, And ready Nature waits upon his hand; When the ripe colours...
Page 86 - The world recedes; it disappears! Heaven opens on my eyes; my ears With sounds seraphic ring! Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O Grave! where is thy victory? O Death! where is thy sting?
Page 132 - Now awful beauty puts on all its arms ; The fair each moment rises in her charms, Repairs her smiles, awakens every grace, And calls forth all the wonders of her face : Sees by degrees a purer blush arise, And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes.
Page 105 - Though oft the ear the open vowels tire; While expletives their feeble aid do join; And ten low words oft creep in one dull line: While they ring round the same unvaried chimes With sure returns of still expected rhymes: Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze...
Page 52 - The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
Page 158 - For others good, or melt at others woe. What can atone (oh ever-injur'd shade !) Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid ? No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier. By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd, By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd, By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd, By strangers honour'd and by strangers mourn'd ! What tho...
Page 116 - The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head, With his own tongue still edifies his ears, And always list'ning to himself appears.
Page 103 - Some to Conceit alone their taste confine. And glittering thoughts struck out at every line; Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit; One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit. Poets, like painters, thus, unskill'd to trace The naked Nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover every part, And hide with ornaments their want of art.
Page 159 - What though no friends in sable weeds appear, Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year, And bear about the mockery of woe To midnight dances, and the public show?

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