The Prelude, Or, Growth of a Poet's Mind: An Autobiographical PoemE. Moxon, 1850 - 374 pages |
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Alps amid beauty behold beneath BOOK breath Buttermere Cloth clouds creature dear delight doth dream earth Edwin Bryant eyes faith fancy fear feel felt fields flowers flowery field Friend gilt edges glory groves happy hath haunts heard heart heaven Helvellyn hills honor hope hour human IMAGINATION AND TASTE immortal verse IMPAIRED AND RESTORED kindred labor less liberty light living living mind looked mighty mind mood morocco extra mountains Nature Nature's night o'er objects once passion peace pinnace plain pleasure Poet RESIDENCE IN FRANCE Robespierre rocks round Samuel Lover scene seemed sense shades shape sight silent solitude song sorrow soul sound spirit stars stood stream sublime summer sweet tale tender thee thence things thou thoughts touched trees truth turned twas Vale verse voice walks wanderings Whate'er whence wind Windermere woods words youth
Popular passages
Page 40 - Alone upon the rock — oh, then, the calm And dead still water lay upon my mind Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky, Never before so beautiful, sank down Into my heart, and held me like a dream...
Page 122 - There was a Boy : ye knew him well, ye cliffs And islands of Winander ! — many a time At evening, when the earliest stars began To move along the edges of the hills, Rising or setting, would he stand alone Beneath the trees or by the glimmering lake, And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands Pressed closely palm to palm, and to his mouth Uplifted, he, as through an instrument, Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls, That they might answer him...
Page 218 - In size a giant, stalking through thick fog, His sheep like Greenland bears; or, as he stepped Beyond the boundary line of some hill-shadow, His form hath flashed upon me, glorified By the deep radiance of the setting sun...
Page 260 - Who crept along fitting her languid gait Unto a heifer's motion, by a cord Tied to her arm, and picking thus from the lane Its sustenance, while the girl with pallid hands Was busy knitting in a heartless mood Of solitude, and at the sight my friend In agitation said, "'Tis against that That we are fighting...
Page 327 - It was, in truth, An ordinary sight ; but I should need Colours and words that are unknown to man, To paint the visionary dreariness...
Page 58 - The antechapel where the statue stood Of Newton with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
Page 19 - Of unknown modes of being ; o'er my thoughts There hung a darkness, call it solitude Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes Remained, no pleasant images of trees, Of sea or sky, no colors of green fields ; But huge and mighty forms, that do not live Like living men, moved slowly through the mind By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.
Page 299 - O times, In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, law. and statute, took at once The attraction of a country in romance ! When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights When most intent on making of herself A prime enchantress...
Page 201 - Children, Babes in arms. Oh, blank confusion ! true epitome Of what the mighty City is herself, To thousands upon thousands of her sons, Living amid the same perpetual whirl Of trivial objects, melted and reduced To one identity, by differences That have no law, no meaning, and no end — Oppression, under which even highest minds Must labour, whence the strongest are not free.
Page 19 - Wisdom and Spirit of the universe ! Thou soul that art the eternity of thought, That givest to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion, not in vain By day or star-light thus from my first dawn Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me The passions that build up our human soul ; Not with the mean and vulgar works of man, But with high objects, with enduring things — With...