The Prelude, Or, Growth of a Poet's Mind: An Autobiographical Poem

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D. Appleton, 1850 - 374 pages

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Page 122 - 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. — And they would shout Across the watery vale, and shout again, Responsive to his call, — with quivering peals, And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud Redoubled and redoubled...
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...
Page 361 - This spiritual Love acts not nor can exist Without Imagination, which, in truth, Is but another name for absolute power And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, And Reason in her most exalted mood.
Page 17 - Like harmony in music ; there is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society. How strange that all The terrors, pains, and early miseries, Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused Within my mind, should e'er have borne a part, And that a needful part, in making up The calm existence that is mine when I Am worthy of myself...
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...
Page 22 - Ye Presences of Nature in the sky And on the earth ! Ye Visions of the hills ! And Souls of lonely places ! can I think A vulgar hope was yours when ye employed Such ministry, when ye through many a year Haunting me thus among my boyish sports, On caves and trees, upon the woods and hills, Impressed upon all forms the characters Of danger or desire ; and thus did make The surface of the universal earth With triumph and delight, with hope and fear, Work like a sea...
Page 356 - There I beheld the emblem of a mind That feeds upon infinity, that broods Over the dark abyss, intent to hear Its voices issuing forth to silent light In one continuous stream...
Page 364 - She came, no more a phantom to adorn A moment, but an inmate of the heart, And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined To penetrate the lofty and the low ; Even as one essence of pervading light Shines in the brightest of ten thousand stars, And the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp Couched in the dewy grass.
Page 26 - Those hallowed and pure motions of the sense Which seem, in their simplicity, to own An intellectual charm; that calm delight Which, if I err not, surely must belong To those first-born affinities that fit Our new existence to existing things, And, in our dawn of being, constitute The bond of union between life and joy.
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...

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