The ring and the book. Author's ed, Volume 11869 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abate Arezzo Augustinian babe Baccano bade bed and board beside brain breath brother brow Canon Caponsacchi caught cheat child church cockatrice Comparini confessed Count Guido court cried crime dare death deed door dowry eyes face fact fault fear Fiesole Fisc flesh Foligno fool Guido Franceschini guilt hand hate head heart heaven heir hell husband innocent judge lady laugh law and gospel leave letters light look lords marriage mind Molinists never night o'er once Paolo Philosophic Sin Pietro play Pompilia poor Pope pray priest prove punished Rome round Saint Saint Peter shame Sirs smile soul stand stood street's end sweet lords tale tell there's thing thought told tonsure took touch truth turn twixt usufruct villa Violante wife wife's word wrong
Popular passages
Page 49 - This is the same voice : can thy soul know change ? Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help ! Never may I commence my song, my due To God who best taught song by gift of thee, Except with bent head and beseeching hand — That still, despite the distance and the dark, What was, again may be ; some interchange Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought, Some benediction anciently thy smile...
Page 49 - O lyric Love, half angel and half bird, And all a wonder and a wild desire, — Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue, And sang a kindred soul out to his face, — Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart — When the first summons from the darkling earth Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, And bared them of the glory — to drop down, To toil for man, to suffer or to die, — This is the same voice : can thy soul know change ? Hail then,...
Page 29 - Creates, no, but resuscitates, perhaps. Inalienable, the arch-prerogative Which turns thought, act — conceives, expresses too ! No less, man, bounded, yearning to be free, May so project his surplusage of soul In search of body, so add self to self By owning what lay ownerless before, — So find, so fill full, so appropriate forms — That, although nothing which had never life Shall get life from him, be, not having been, Yet, something dead may get to live again, Something with too much life...
Page 30 - And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands ; and he stretched himself upon the child, and the flesh of the child waxed warm.
Page 11 - A Roman murder-case: Position of the entire criminal cause Of Guido Franceschini nobleman, With certain Four the cutthroats in his pay, Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death By heading or hanging as befitted ranks, At Rome on February Twenty Two, Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety Eight: Wherein it is disputed if, and when, Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet 'scape The customary forfeit.
Page 10 - Do you see this square old yellow Book, I toss I' the air, and catch again, and twirl about By the crumpled vellum covers, — pure crude fact Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard, And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since?
Page 329 - To have to do with nothing but the true, The good, the eternal — and these, not alone In the main current of the general life, But small experiences of every day, Concerns of the particular hearth and home: To learn not only by a comet's rush But a rose's birth, — not by the grandeur, God — But the comfort, Christ.
Page 31 - Count Guido Franceschini the Aretine, Descended of an ancient house, though poor, A beak-nosed bushy-bearded black-haired lord, Lean, pallid, low of stature yet robust, Fifty years old, — having four years ago Married Pompilia Comparini, young, Good, beautiful, at Rome, where she was born, And brought her to Arezzo, where they lived Unhappy lives, whatever curse the cause, — This husband, taking four accomplices, Followed this wife to Rome, where she was fled From their Arezzo to find peace again,...