The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Including the Series Edited with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, Volume 20

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J. Johnson, 1810 - English poetry - 644 pages

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Page 356 - All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence? We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, Have with our needles created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key; As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, Had been incorporate. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition...
Page 198 - Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate In amorous ditties, all a summer's day; While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded...
Page 533 - Kill noxious creatures, where 'tis sin to save ; This only just prerogative we have : But nourish life with vegetable food, And shun the sacrilegious taste of blood.
Page 383 - For there is hope of a tree if it be cut down that it will sprout again, and that the tender branches thereof will not cease.
Page 208 - Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.
Page 378 - For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
Page 530 - The breathless embryo with a spirit warm'd ; But when the mother's throes begin to come, The creature, pent within the narrow room...
Page 347 - Two cities radiant on the shield appear, The image one of peace, and one of war, Here sacred pomp and genial feast delight, And solemn dance, and hymeneal rite; Along the street the new-made brides are led, With torches flaming to the nuptial bed...
Page 423 - By pray'rs are bent to pity, and to love; If human miseries can move their mind; If yet they can forgive, and yet be kind; Tell how we may restore, by second birth, Mankind, and people desolated earth.
Page 319 - Blest as the immortal gods is he, The youth who fondly sits by thee, And hears and sees thee all the while Softly speak and sweetly smile.

About the author (1810)

Samuel Johnson was born in 1709, in Lichfield, England. The son of a bookseller, Johnson briefly attended Pembroke College, Oxford, taught school, worked for a printer, and opened a boarding academy with his wife's money before that failed. Moving to London in 1737, Johnson scratched out a living from writing. He regularly contributed articles and moral essays to journals, including the Gentleman's Magazine, the Adventurer, and the Idler, and became known for his poems and satires in imitation of Juvenal. Between 1750 and 1752, he produced the Rambler almost single-handedly. In 1755 Johnson published Dictionary of the English Language, which secured his place in contemporary literary circles. Johnson wrote Rasselas in a week in 1759, trying to earn money to visit his dying mother. He also wrote a widely-read edition of Shakespeare's plays, as well as Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland and Lives of the Poets. Johnson's writing was so thoughtful, powerful, and influential that he was considered a singular authority on all things literary. His stature attracted the attention of James Boswell, whose biography, Life of Johnson, provides much of what we know about its subject. Johnson died in 1784.

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