Yesterdays with Authors

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Houghton, Mifflin, 1899 - Literary Criticism - 419 pages
 

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Page 359 - Homer ruled as his demesne : Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken ; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific — and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise: Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Page 171 - I commit my soul to the mercy of God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; and I exhort my dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teaching of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man's narrow construction of its letter here or there.
Page 249 - The other turns to a mirth-moving jest, Which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor, Delivers in such apt and gracious words That aged ears play truant at his tales And younger hearings are quite ravished ; So sweet and voluble is his discourse.
Page 124 - I only hear above his place of rest Their tender undertone, The infinite longings of a troubled breast, The voice so like his own. There in seclusion and remote from men The wizard hand lies cold, Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen. And left the tale half told. Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power, And the lost clew regain? The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower Unfinished must remain!
Page 373 - Touch us gently, Time ! Let us glide adown thy stream Gently, — as we sometimes glide Through a quiet dream ! Humble voyagers are We, Husband, wife, and children three — (One is lost, — an angel, fled To the azure overhead ! ) Touch us gently, Time! We've not proud nor soaring wings : Our ambition, our content Lies in simple things. Humble voyagers are We, O'er Life's dim unsounded sea, Seeking only some calm clime : — Touch us gently, gentle Time ! EBENEZER ELLIOTT.
Page 182 - Tim, :' very light to carry," and Rossius promising fair to attain the rotundity of the Anonymous Cove in the Epigram : — ' And when he walks the streets the paviors cry, " God bless you, sir !
Page 63 - They precisely suit my taste, — solid and substantial, written on the strength of beef and through the inspiration of ale, and just as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump of earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they were being made a show of.
Page 7 - I wish you also to remember these lines of Pope, and to make yourselves entirely masters of his system of ethics ; because, putting Shakespeare aside as rather the world's than ours, I hold Pope to be the most perfect representative we have, since Chaucer, of the true English mind ; and I think the Dunciad is the most absolutely chiselled and monumental work ' exacted ' in our country. You will find, as you study Pope, that he has expressed for you, in the strictest language and within the briefest...
Page 261 - I care not, fortune, what you me deny : You cannot rob me of free nature's grace ; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face ; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave : Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.
Page 384 - The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books; The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!

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