The Making of English Literature |
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Page 8
... greatest poem of the Anglo - Saxon literature either pagan or Christian . Beowulf is the oldest extant heroic poem in any Germanic tongue . Beowulf In a conservative estimate , we may attribute the conception of the poem to the sixth ...
... greatest poem of the Anglo - Saxon literature either pagan or Christian . Beowulf is the oldest extant heroic poem in any Germanic tongue . Beowulf In a conservative estimate , we may attribute the conception of the poem to the sixth ...
Page 11
... greatest Anglo - Saxon poem , with this picture of the ideal king , valiant , tender , and loving the praises of men . Beowulf is a noble poem , worthy to stand in the forefront of a great literature . The life Significance described is ...
... greatest Anglo - Saxon poem , with this picture of the ideal king , valiant , tender , and loving the praises of men . Beowulf is a noble poem , worthy to stand in the forefront of a great literature . The life Significance described is ...
Page 31
... greatest of Anglo - Saxon prose - writers . Ælfric was born about 955 and died not far from 1025 . Ælfric a man of gentle yet decided nature , cultured , learned , and eminently pure in life . As a writer , 1 he had not the creative ...
... greatest of Anglo - Saxon prose - writers . Ælfric was born about 955 and died not far from 1025 . Ælfric a man of gentle yet decided nature , cultured , learned , and eminently pure in life . As a writer , 1 he had not the creative ...
Page 50
... greatest religious poem is the Cursor Mundi , a huge work of some thirty thousand lines by an unknown poet . It is a religious history of the world , based chiefly on the Bible story , but intermingling this with many dis- cursive ...
... greatest religious poem is the Cursor Mundi , a huge work of some thirty thousand lines by an unknown poet . It is a religious history of the world , based chiefly on the Bible story , but intermingling this with many dis- cursive ...
Page 56
... greatest personalities of the age is John Wyclif . He is famous not alone because of his literary work ; for as a matter of fact his name belongs Wyclif even more to the history of religion and religious thought than to the history of ...
... greatest personalities of the age is John Wyclif . He is famous not alone because of his literary work ; for as a matter of fact his name belongs Wyclif even more to the history of religion and religious thought than to the history of ...
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Common terms and phrases
Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Anglo-Saxon literature artist ballads Battle of Brunanburh beauty Ben Jonson Beowulf Browning Cædmon called Canterbury Tales Carlyle century character characteristic charm Chaucer chiefly classical comedy criticism Cynewulf death Dickens drama dramatists Dryden emotion England English literature Essays expression fact Faerie Queene faith feeling genius George Eliot gift greatest heart human humor ideals illustrate imagination impulse individual influence intellectual interest Jane Austen John Johnson King later Layamon less literary living lyric lyric poetry masterpiece ment Milton modern moral movement nature novel novelist passion period plays poems poetic poetry Pope portray portrayal probably produced prose style prose-writers pure Puritan realistic religious Renaissance represented Robert Browning romantic Romanticism Ruskin satire seems sense Shakespeare Shelley social song Sonnets soul Spenser spirit story Tennyson Thackeray Thomas thought tion translation typical verse vivid Wordsworth writers written wrote
Popular passages
Page 311 - The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven, Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given; The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
Page 316 - Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy ? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven : We know her woof, her texture ; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air and gnomed mine — Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade.
Page 150 - O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hie jacet.
Page 312 - To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite ; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night ; To defy power which seems omnipotent ; To love and bear ; to hope till hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates...
Page 170 - I was confirmed in this opinion ; that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem...
Page 375 - O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence : live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's search To vaster issues.
Page 133 - Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on ; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
Page 132 - She should have died hereafter ; There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.
Page 130 - No more of that. — I pray you, in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am ; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice...
Page 387 - How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.