The Writings of James Russell Lowell: Literary essays

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Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1890

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Page 45 - This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. BAN. This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed The air is delicate.
Page 112 - tis all a cheat, Yet fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit ; Trust on and think to-morrow will repay ; To-morrow's falser than the former day ; Lies worse ; and while it says we shall be blest With some new joys, cuts off what we possest. Strange cozenage ! none would live past years again ; Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain ; And from the dregs of life think to receive, What the first sprightly running could not give."* It was observed to Dr.
Page 78 - If to do were as easy as to know what were^ good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.
Page 284 - When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme, In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights, Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have express'd Even such a beauty as you master now.
Page 121 - For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds ; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the...
Page 106 - Oxford to him a dearer name shall be, Than his own mother university. Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage; He chooses Athens in his riper age.
Page 43 - When proud-pied April dressed in all his trim Hath put a spirit of youth in everything', That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him. Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue Could make me any summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew; Nor did I wonder at the...
Page 252 - Than those of age, thy forehead wrapp'd in clouds, A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne A sliding car, indebted to no wheels, But urged by storms along its slippery way, I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st, And dreaded as thou art...
Page 74 - I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers Could not with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum.
Page 132 - The poets, who must live by courts, or starve, Were proud, so good a government to serve ; And, mixing with buffoons and pimps profane, Tainted the stage for some small snip of gain : For they, like harlots, under bawds professed, Took all the ungodly pains, and got the least.

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