The book of recitations [ed.] by C.W. Smith

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Page 211 - Wept o'er his wounds or tales of sorrow done, Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won. Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow, And quite forgot their vices in their woe ; Careless their merits or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began.
Page 130 - Be that word our sign of parting, bird, or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting: "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! Quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!
Page 275 - O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife ; and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the fore-finger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep : Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners...
Page 19 - Art is long, and time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.
Page 282 - With a bare bodkin ? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life ; But that the dread of something after death, — The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, — puzzles the will ; And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all...
Page 260 - Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy.
Page 63 - On Linden, when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow ; And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly. But Linden saw another sight, When the drum beat at dead of night, Commanding fires of death to light The darkness of her scenery.
Page 278 - tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly.
Page 274 - This is the state of man : To-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes ; to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him : The third day comes a frost, a killing frost ; And, — when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a ripening, — nips his root, And then he falls, as I do.
Page 210 - Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, And still where many a garden flower grows wild ; There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, The village preacher's modest mansion rose. A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a year; Remote from towns he ran his godly race, Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place.

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