Introduction to English literature, from Chaucer to TennysonJ.F. Shaw, 1857 - 360 pages |
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Page 18
... close a book , ask yourself what it has done for you ; and better , perhaps , than criticism or any other counsel , shall the silent communings of your heart tell you whether the oracle was a good or an evil one . I have thus sought to ...
... close a book , ask yourself what it has done for you ; and better , perhaps , than criticism or any other counsel , shall the silent communings of your heart tell you whether the oracle was a good or an evil one . I have thus sought to ...
Page 32
... close up any of the natural resources to the mind , there follows feebleness or dispro- portioned power , or moodiness and fantastic melancholy , and , in extreme cases , the crazed brain . If the statistics be accurate , it is an ...
... close up any of the natural resources to the mind , there follows feebleness or dispro- portioned power , or moodiness and fantastic melancholy , and , in extreme cases , the crazed brain . If the statistics be accurate , it is an ...
Page 47
... close begirt , however , with the fierce discords of the Indian- tongues : for years and years their home was hemmed in within a narrow strip along the Atlantic , the English and the French languages having a divided sway , when the ...
... close begirt , however , with the fierce discords of the Indian- tongues : for years and years their home was hemmed in within a narrow strip along the Atlantic , the English and the French languages having a divided sway , when the ...
Page 59
... close by a change in the struc- ture of the stanza and the single long line with which , at the end , the imagination travels forth ; " O ! that our lives , which flee so fast , In purity were such , That not an image of the past Should ...
... close by a change in the struc- ture of the stanza and the single long line with which , at the end , the imagination travels forth ; " O ! that our lives , which flee so fast , In purity were such , That not an image of the past Should ...
Page 68
... the plains of Crecy and Poictiers , by the shafts from the hosts of English archers . With all the animating movements of the reign , Chaucer was in close and active sympathy ; he was a courtier 68 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE .
... the plains of Crecy and Poictiers , by the shafts from the hosts of English archers . With all the animating movements of the reign , Chaucer was in close and active sympathy ; he was a courtier 68 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE .
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admirable beauty Byron century character Charles Lamb Chaucer Christian companionship Cowper death deep discipline divine duty earnest earth emotions English language English literature English poetry English prose expression faculties Faery Queen familiar French Revolution genial genius gentle genuine give glory habits happy heart honour Horace Walpole human imagination influence intellectual intercourse Jeremy Taylor language lecture letters light literary living look Lord Macbeth memory Milton mind misanthropy moral nation nature never Paradise Lost pass passage passion perhaps period Philip Van Artevelde philosophy poem poet poet's poetic reader reading remarkable sacred Saxon Scott sense sentence Shakspeare song sorrow soul sound speak speech Spenser spirit stanzas style sympathy teaching Tenterden things Thomas Fuller thou thought and feeling true truth utterance verse Washington Irving wisdom wise wit and humour womanly words Wordsworth writings
Popular passages
Page 98 - I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory ; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no...
Page 176 - Yet, even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols : and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.
Page 133 - It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry ; but that it is now, at length, discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment...
Page 160 - Man knoweth not the price thereof ; Neither is it found in the land of the living. The depth saith, It is not in me: And the sea saith, It is not with me.
Page 154 - I see before me the gladiator lie : He leans upon his hand ; his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his drooped 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 hailed the wretch who won.
Page 147 - They parted - ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs, which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between; But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.
Page 161 - O Lady! we receive but what we give And in our life alone does Nature live: Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud! And would we aught behold of higher worth, Than that inanimate cold world allowed To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the Earth And from the soul itself must there be sent A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, Of all sweet sounds the life and element!
Page 160 - When elements to elements conform, And dust is as it should be, shall I not Feel all. I see, less dazzling, but more warm? The bodiless thought? the spirit of each spot, Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot ? LXXV.
Page 95 - I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style; which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobwebs of that uncivil age, what would it work, trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?
Page 59 - Is the night chilly and dark ? The night is chilly, but not dark. The thin gray cloud is spread on high, It covers but not hides the sky. The moon is behind, and at the full ; And yet she looks both small and dull. The night is chill, the cloud is gray : Tis a month before the month of May, And the Spring comes slowly up this way.