Magazine Essays: Containing a Few Short Essays Written During Leisure Hours

Front Cover
L. Irvine, 1886 - 44 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 17 - I covet truth; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth...
Page 16 - I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough; I brought him home in his nest at even; — He sings the song, but it pleases not now; For I did not bring home the river and sky; He sang to my ear; they sang to my eye.
Page 16 - IT was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee ; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea...
Page 12 - DAUGHTERS of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
Page 16 - I did not bring home the river and sky; He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye. The delicate shells lay on the shore; The bubbles of the latest wave Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, And the bellowing of the savage sea Greeted their safe escape to me. I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
Page 31 - In truth we are under a deception similar to that which misleads the traveller in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravan all is dry and bare ; but far in advance, and far in the rear, is the semblance of refreshing waters. The pilgrims hasten forward and find nothing but sand, where, an hour before, they had seen a lake.
Page 19 - Come, let the burial rite be read, the funeral song be sung ! An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young — A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.
Page 17 - All other pleasures are not worth its pains "; and when the day was not long enough, but the night, too, must be consumed in keen recollections ; when the head boiled all night on the pillow with the generous deed it resolved on; when the moonlight was a pleasing fever, and the stars were letters, and the flowers ciphers, and the air was coined into song; when all business seemed an impertinence, and all the men and women running to and fro in the streets mere pictures.
Page 17 - I inhaled the violet's breath; Around me stood the oaks and firs; Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity; Again I...
Page 17 - But be our experience in particulars what it may, no man ever forgot the visitations of that power to his heart and brain, which created all things new ; which was the dawn in him of music, poetry, and art ; which made the face of nature radiant with purple light, the morning and the night varied enchantments...

Bibliographic information