The English Poets, Volume 1

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Thomas Humphry Ward
Macmillan, 1885
 

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Page 454 - O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide, Than public means, which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand...
Page 455 - Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove : O, no ! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken ; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth "s unknown, although his height be taken.
Page 556 - To move, but doth, if th' other do. And though it in the centre sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must Like th...
Page xv - The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve.
Page 484 - A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall. Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies, Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten: In folly ripe, in reason rotten. Thy belt of straw and ivy buds, Thy coral clasps and amber studs, All these in me no means can move To come to thee, and be thy love.
Page 451 - From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him. Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue Could make me any summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew; Nor did I wonder at the...
Page 334 - And blesseth her with his two happy hands, How the red roses flush up in her cheekes...
Page 450 - Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now; Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow, And do not drop in for an after-loss. Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow, Come in the rearward of a conquered woe; Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, To linger out a purposed overthrow.
Page 421 - I'll make you fast it for your sin, I'll count your power not worth a pin: Alas, what hereby shall I win, If he gainsay me ? What if I beat the wanton boy With many a rod ? He will repay me with annoy, Because a god. Then sit thou safely on my knee, And let thy bower my bosom be, Lurk in mine eyes, I like of thee; O Cupid, so thou pity me, Spare not, but play thee.
Page xxxv - I was confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem...

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