Illustrations of Genius, in Some of Its Relations to Culture and Society

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Ticknor and Fields, 1854 - 356 pages
 

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Page 283 - Thro' weary life this lesson learn, That man was made to mourn. Many and sharp the numerous ills Inwoven with our frame! More pointed still We make ourselves, Regret, remorse, and shame! And man, whose heaven-erected face The smiles of love adorn, Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn...
Page 274 - Is there a whim-inspired fool, Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule, Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool ? Let him draw near ; And owre this grassy heap sing dool, And drap a tear. Is there a Bard of rustic song, Who, noteless, steals the crowds among, . That weekly this area throng?
Page 287 - I'll pledge thee, Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee. Who shall say that fortune grieves him, While the star of hope she leaves him ? Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me : Dark despair around benights me. I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy, Naething could resist my Nancy ; But to see her was to love her ; Love but her, and love for ever. Had we never...
Page 292 - O Scotia, my dear, my native soil, For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent, Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content...
Page 292 - And, oh ! may Heaven their simple lives prevent From luxury's contagion, weak and vile ! Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, A virtuous populace may rise the while, And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved Isle.
Page 292 - Then kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal King, The saint, the father, and the husband prays : Hope " springs exulting on triumphant wing," That thus they all shall meet in future days, There, ever bask in uncreated rays, No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear, Together hymning their Creator's praise, In such society, yet still more dear; While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere.
Page 175 - taketh away the sin of the world ;" who was " wounded for our transgressions," who was " bruised for our iniquities," and by whose
Page 338 - ... of her churches. She is one ample cemetery, and has been for many a year ; but, in the mighty calms that brood for weeks over tropic latitudes, she fascinates the eye with a. fata morgana revelation, as of human life still subsisting in submarine asylums sacred from the storms that torment our upper air.
Page 299 - Where'er, beneath the sky of heaven, The birds of fame have flown. Praise to the man ! a nation stood Beside his coffin with wet eyes, Her brave, her beautiful, her good, As when a loved one dies. And still, as on his funeral day, Men stand his cold earth-couch around, With the mute homage that we pay To consecrated ground. And consecrated ground it is, The last, the hallowed home of one Who lives upon all memories, Though with the buried gone.
Page 326 - Nothing at all. What do you learn from a cookery-book? Something new, something that you did not know before, in every paragraph. But would you therefore put the wretched cookery-book on a higher level of estimation than the divine poem? What you owe to Milton is not any knowledge, of which a million separate items are still but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly level; what you owe is power, that is exercise, and expansion to your own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite,...

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