Nature in Books: Some Studies in BiographyMethuen, 1891 - 194 pages |
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Abbotsford admiration Alfred Tennyson ambition Annan Academy artist battle beautiful birds Border born brook Burns Carlyle Carlyle's century character Chiseldon clouds Coate companion Concord Academy creed critics dead death delight doctrine dream early earth Ecclefechan Edward Irving enjoyment essays experience fact fame fancy father feel fields flowers genius Goethe green happy heart idle imagination immortal intellectual interest labour lament laughing Lincolnshire literary literature living look Lord Tennyson lover Mablethorpe man's Matthew Arnold memory merry mind Nature never novelists pain passion picture play pleasure poet poet's poetry rest rich Richard Jefferies Robert Fergusson says scenery Scott seems Shakespeare sing Sir Walter smile Somersby song sorrow sport story struggle sunshine Swindon taste Tetford things Thoreau thought tion toil truth verse Walden Walden Pond Waverley Novels wild Wiltshire wind wood Wordsworth writing young youth
Popular passages
Page 178 - As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng, The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay; Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity...
Page 63 - For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be ; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales ; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'da ghastly dew From the- nations...
Page 80 - Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.
Page 175 - The instinct of delight in Nature and her beauty had no doubt extraordinary strength in Wordsworth himself as a child. But to say that universally this instinct is mighty in childhood, and tends to die away afterwards, is to say what is extremely doubtful. In many people, perhaps with the majority of educated persons, the love of nature is nearly imperceptible at ten years old, but strong and operative at thirty.
Page 158 - Yet, let not this too much, my son, Disturb thy youthful breast : This partial view of human-kind Is surely not the last ! The poor, oppressed, honest man Had never, sure, been born, Had there not been some recompense To comfort those that mourn ! O death ! the poor man's dearest friend...
Page xiv - The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colors and their forms were then to me An appetite: a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.
Page 78 - I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life...
Page 62 - Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new : That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do...
Page 98 - Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms; Of patriot battles, won of old By Wallace wight, and Bruce the bold : Of later fields of feud and fight, When, pouring from their Highland height, The Scottish clans, in headlong sway, Had swept the scarlet ranks away. While...
Page 162 - A set o' dull conceited hashes Confuse their brains in college classes ! They gang in stirks, and come out asses, Plain truth to speak; An' syne they think to climb Parnassus By dint o