Essays in the Romantic PoetsMacmillan, 1924 - 276 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
abstract Ancient Mariner asserts beauty believe Biographia Literaria Book Byron Cain Canto cause character child Childe Harold Christ Christianity Coleridge Coleridge's conceived conception conviction creative critics deep Deity divine doctrine earth eighteenth century energy essay eternal evil existence experience expressed faith feeling free-will freedom Godwin growth harmonize heart heaven human ideas imagination immanence immortality impersonal individual influence intellectual Kant Lines Above Tintern literary live Lyrical Ballads man's Manfred mighty mind moral mystic Nature Necessitarian Necessity objects Ode to Duty original original sin passage passion passive philosophy Plato poem poet poet's poetic poetry possessed Prelude principle Prometheus pure Queen Mab reality reason religion religious revealed Revolt of Islam says sensation sense Shelley Shelley's Simplon Pass Sonnet soul speaks spirit Stanza Stopford Brooke sublime things thinking thou thought Tintern Abbey tion transcendence transcendental transcendentalist true truth unity universe whole word Wordsworth written youth
Popular passages
Page 45 - Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower, Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power, Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower, A new Earth and new Heaven, Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud — Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud — We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colours a suffusion from that light.
Page 71 - The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination.
Page 42 - ... Yet well I ken the banks where Amaranths blow, Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. Bloom, O ye Amaranths ! bloom for whom ye may, For me ye bloom not ! Glide, rich streams, away ! With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll : And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul ? WORK WITHOUT HOPE draws nectar in a sieve, And HOPE without an object cannot live.
Page 33 - O sweeter than the marriage-feast, 'Tis sweeter far to me, To walk together to the kirk With a goodly company! — To walk together to the kirk, And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends, Old men, and babes, and loving friends, And youths and maidens gay ! Farewell, farewell!
Page 23 - And what if all of animated nature Be but organic harps diversely framed, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of all?
Page 258 - There is the moral of all human tales; 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, First Freedom, and then Glory — when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption, — barbarism at last. And History, with all her volumes vast, Hath but one page...
Page 249 - Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye, With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul To make these felt and feeling, well may be Things that have made me watchful; the far roll Of your departing voices, is the knoll Of what in me is sleepless, — if I rest. But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal? Are ye like those within the human breast? Or do ye find at length, like eagles, some high nest?
Page 177 - One adequate support For the calamities of mortal life Exists — one only ; an assured belief That the procession of our fate, howe'er Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being Of infinite benevolence and power ; Whose everlasting purposes embrace All accidents, converting them to good.
Page 31 - I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came, and made My heart as dry as dust.
Page 49 - Rise, O ever rise, Rise like a cloud of Incense, from the Earth ! Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills, Thou dread Ambassador from Earth to Heaven, Great Hierarch ! tell thou the silent Sky, And tell the Stars, and tell yon rising Sun, Earth, with her thousand voices, praises GOD.