EssaysTicknor and Fields, 1856 - 274 pages |
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action animal appears arrive beauty believe better body carry cause character church comes conventional conversation direction divine draw earth equal exist experience express eyes fact fall fashion feel flower force genius gift give hand hear heart heaven hold hour human individual intellect keep kind leave less light live look manner means measure mind moral nature never object once opinion party pass persons plant poet politics poor present reason relations rest rich secret seems seen sense society soul speak spirit stand symbol talent things thou thought tion true truth turn universe virtue whilst whole wise wish wonder write young
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Page 19 - Spenser platonising, sings: — -Every spirit as it is more pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight With cheerful grace and amiable sight. For of the soul the body form doth take: For soul is form and doth the body make.
Page 40 - Banks and tariffs, the newspaper and caucus, methodism and unitarianism, are flat and dull to dull people, but rest on the same foundations of wonder as the town of Troy, and the temple of Delphos, and are as swiftly passing away.
Page 14 - For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down. but we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations.
Page 87 - Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! - it seems to say, — there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.
Page 25 - As the eyes of Lyncoeus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession.
Page 13 - ... operation, and effect; or, more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or, theologically, the Father, the Spirit, and the Son; but which we will call here the Knower, the Doer, and the Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and for the love of beauty.
Page 52 - Grief too will make us idealists. In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate, — no more. I cannot get it nearer to me.
Page 145 - As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs; And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth In form and shape compact and beautiful, In will, in action free, companionship, And thousand other signs of purer life; So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, A power more strong in beauty, born of us And fated to excel us, as we pass In glory that old Darkness: nor are we Thereby more conquer'd, than by us the rule Of shapeless Chaos.
Page 74 - I am ready to die out of nature, and be born again into this new yet unapproachable America I have found in the West.
Page 47 - EXPERIENCE. The lords of life, the lords of life, — I saw them pass, In their own guise, Like and unlike, Portly and grim, Use and Surprise, Surface and Dream, Succession swift, and spectral Wrong, Temperament without a tongue, And the inventor of the game Omnipresent without name ; — Some to see, some to be guessed, They marched from east to west : Little man, least of all, Among the legs of his guardians tall, Walked about with puzzled look : — TTiTTi by the hand dear Nature took ; Dearest...