Essays--Modern

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Macmillan and Company, 1883 - 334 pages
 

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Page 310 - Night ! when our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue ? Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus with the host of heaven came, And lo ! Creation widened in man's view.
Page 318 - Under the arch of Life, where love and death, Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw Beauty enthroned ; and though her gaze struck awe, I drew it in as simply as my breath. Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath, The sky and sea bend on thee, — which can draw, By sea or sky or woman, to one law, The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.
Page 330 - Love's own breast, — Where round the secret of all spheres All angels lay their wings to rest, — How shall my soul stand rapt and awed, When, by the new birth borne abroad Throughout the music of the suns, It enters in her soul at once And knows the silence there for God ! Here with her face doth memory sit Meanwhile, and wait the day's decline, Till other eyes shall look from it, Eyes of the spirit's Palestine, Even than the old gaze tenderer : While hopes and aims long lost with her Stand round...
Page 319 - This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise Thy voice and hand shake still, — -long known to thee By flying hair and fluttering hem, — the beat Following her daily of thy heart and feet, How passionately and irretrievably, In what fond flight, how many ways and days!
Page 22 - Or rather, what he desired was hardly what we call democracy ; for he defines democracy as "the progress of all through all, under the leadership of the best and wisest.
Page 331 - ... hand to death, and all is vain, What shall assuage the unforgotten pain And teach the unforgetful to forget? Shall Peace be still a sunk stream long unmet, — Or may the soul at once in a green plain Stoop through the spray of some sweet life-fountain And cull the dew-drenched flowering amulet ? Ah ! when the wan soul in that golden air Between the scriptured petals softly blown Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown, — Ah ! let none other alien spell soe'er But only the one Hope's...
Page 324 - NOT I myself know all my love for thee : How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday? Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be As doors and windows bared to some loud sea, Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray; And shall my sense pierce love, — the last relay And ultimate outpost of eternity?
Page 269 - I walked with her once in the Fellows' Garden of Trinity, on an evening of rainy May; and* she, stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as her text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of men, — the words God, Immortality, Duty, — pronounced, with terrible earnestness, how inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third.
Page 233 - Disons donc hardiment que la religion est un produit de l'homme normal, que l'homme est le plus dans le vrai quand il est le plus religieux et le plus assuré d'une destinée infinie; mais écartons toute confiance...
Page 328 - Look in my face ; my name is Might-have-been ; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell ; Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between ; Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen. Mark me, how still I am ! But should...

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