A History of English Literature |
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Popular passages
Page 171 - Going to the Wars TELL me not, Sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast, and quiet mind, To war and arms I fly. True; a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such, As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.
Page 427 - OF Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, heavenly muse...
Page 186 - He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian.
Page 397 - When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain ; And the brown bright nightingale amorous Is half assuaged for Itylus, For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
Page 185 - So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky...
Page 186 - Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam...
Page 206 - All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned ; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.
Page 137 - This story shall the good man teach his son ; And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered ; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers ; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother ; be he ne'er so vile This day shall gentle his condition...
Page 97 - Despair at me doth throw; 0 make in me those civil wars to cease; 1 will good tribute pay, if thou do so. Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light, A rosy garland and a weary head: And if these things, as being thine by right, Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.
Page 364 - There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides — met To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture ! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set And blew. " Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.