The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, Volume 2

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A. & C. Black, 1896

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Page 258 - Or mild concerns of ordinary life, A constant influence, a peculiar grace ; But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for human kind, Is happy as a Lover ; and attired With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired...
Page 264 - All shod with steel, We hissed along the polished ice in games Confederate, imitative of the chase And woodland pleasures, — the resounding horn, The pack loud bellowing, and the hunted hare.
Page 206 - My shaping spirit of Imagination. For not to think of what I needs must feel But to be still and patient, all I can; And haply by abstruse research to steal From my own nature all the natural man — This was my sole resource, my only plan; Till that which suits a part infects the whole, And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.
Page 237 - She was a phantom of delight When first she gleam'd upon my sight; A lovely apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay. I saw her upon nearer view...
Page 452 - When Mrs. Siddons came into the room, there happened to be no chair ready for her, which he observing, said with a smile, ' Madam, you who so often occasion a want of seats to other people, will the more easily excuse the want of one yourself.
Page 137 - I mourned with thousands, but as one More deeply grieved, for He was gone Whose light I hailed when first it shone, And showed my youth How Verse may build a princely throne On humble truth.
Page 205 - Lady ! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live; Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud...
Page 295 - The Youth of green savannahs spake, And many an endless, endless lake, With all its fairy crowds Of islands, that together lie As quietly as spots of sky Among the evening clouds.
Page 139 - I were to linger upon this, the greatest event in the unfolding of my own mind. Let me say in one word, that, at a period when neither the one nor the other writer was valued by the public — both having a long warfare to accomplish of contumely and ridicule, before they could rise into their present estimation — I found in these poems " the ray of a new morning," and an absolute revelation of untrodden worlds, teeming with power and beauty, as yet unsuspected amongst men.
Page 150 - I recognized my object. This was Coleridge. I examined him steadfastly for a minute or more ; and it struck me that he saw neither myself nor any other object in the street.

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