Early and recent conditionsPrinted at the Riverside Press, 1885 |
Common terms and phrases
anapestic artist ballad bard Bayard Taylor beauty blank-verse Bryant cæsura charm criticism death devoted didacticism distinct dramatic early Edgar Allan Poe effect Emerson England English essays Evangeline expression faith feeling genius gift Golden Legend grace hand heart hexameter Homer humor ideal idyl Iliad imagination inspiration instinct intellectual Israfel labor land learned legends less Ligeia literary literature Longfellow Lowell lyrical Margaret Fuller master measure melody ment method modern mood muse native nature never original passion period Philistia pieces Plotinus Poe's poems poet poet's poetic poetry prose pure Puritan Quaker rendering rhyme rience romance scarcely seemed sense sentiment sion song soul spirit style sure sweet taste Tennyson Thanatopsis theme things thought tion touch traits translation true truth ture Ulalume verse voice Whittier WILLIAM words Wordsworth worth writers written youth
Popular passages
Page 156 - The hand that rounded Peter's dome And groined the aisles of Christian Rome Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew; The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Page 233 - But lo, a stir is in the air! The wave — there is a movement there! As if the towers had thrust aside, In slightly sinking, the dull tide — As if their tops had feebly given A void within the filmy Heaven. The waves have now a redder glow — The hours are breathing faint and low — And when, amid no earthly moans, Down, down that town shall settle hence, Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reverence.
Page 112 - A hard, dull bitterness of cold, That checked, mid-vein, the circling race Of life-blood in the sharpened face, The coming of the snow-storm told. The wind blew east ; we heard the roar Of Ocean on his wintry shore, And felt the strong pulse throbbing there Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
Page 237 - Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow (This — all this — was in the olden Time long ago) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away.
Page 79 - Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashings — yet the dead are there; And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep — the dead reign there alone.
Page 162 - DAYS. 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. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.
Page 146 - For Nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.
Page 74 - Oh ! many are the Poets that are sown By Nature ; men endowed with highest gifts, The vision and the faculty divine ; Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse...
Page 179 - Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.
Page 113 - The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons...