Advice in the Pursuits of Literature, Containing Historical, Biographical, and Critical Remarks

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J.K, Porter, 1841 - Books and reading - 296 pages

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Page 250 - The oracles are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving: Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving: No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
Page 48 - Come you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood, Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it!
Page 255 - Now o'er the one half world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep ; now witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings ; and wither'd murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf. Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design, Moves like a ghost.
Page 67 - He raised a mortal to the skies, She drew an angel down. GRAND CHORUS. At last divine Cecilia came, Inventress of tke vocal frame ; The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store. Enlarged the former narrow bounds. And added length to solemn sounds. With nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before. Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide th-e, crown...
Page 59 - Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night ? I did not err : there does a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night, And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.
Page 67 - At last divine Cecilia came, Inventress of the vocal frame; The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store, Enlarged the former narrow bounds, And added length to solemn sounds, With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before. Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide the crown : He raised a mortal to the skies: She drew an angel down.
Page 60 - And in sweet madness robb'd it of itself; But such a sacred and home-felt delight, Such sober certainty of waking bliss, I never heard till now.
Page 167 - Where on the ^Egean shore a city stands, Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil ; Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits Or hospitable, in her sweet recess, City or suburban, studious walks and shades. See there the olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long; There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound Of bees...
Page 62 - I saw them under a green mantling vine, That crawls along the side of yon small hill, Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots. Their port was more than human as they stood : I took it for a faery vision Of some gay creatures of the element That in the colours of the rainbow live, And play i
Page 155 - I do remember well the hour which burst My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was, When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, And wept, I knew not why; until there rose From the near schoolroom, voices, that, alas! Were but one echo from a world of woes — The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.

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