The royal drawing room table book; comprising original tales and poetry

Front Cover
Hamilton, Adams, 1870
 

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Page 58 - O'ER the glad waters of the dark blue sea, Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free, Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam, Survey our empire, and behold our home!
Page 169 - In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the ear: Those days are gone — but Beauty still is here. States fall, arts fade — but Nature doth not die, Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!
Page 18 - Myself, and thee — a peasant of the Alps, Thy humble virtues, hospitable home, And spirit patient, pious, proud and free; Thy self-respect, grafted on innocent thoughts; Thy days of health, and nights of sleep; thy toils, By danger dignified, yet guiltless ; hopes Of cheerful old age and a quiet grave, With cross and garland over its green turf, And thy grandchildren's love for epitaph ; This do I see — and then I look within — It matters not — my soul was scorch'd already!
Page 163 - By poetry we mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes many metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colours.
Page 132 - Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn ; Or in the emptier waste, resembling air, Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide In circuit, undetermined square or round, With opal towers and battlements...
Page 126 - Farewell happy fields Where joy for ever dwells! Hail horrors, hail Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell Receive thy new possessor; one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
Page 31 - In loving thou dost well, in passion not, Wherein true love consists not. Love refines The thoughts, and heart enlarges ; hath his seat In reason, and is judicious ; is the scale By which to heavenly love thou may'st ascend, Not sunk in carnal pleasure : for which cause, Among the beasts no mate for thee was found.
Page 131 - A pillar of state ; deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat, and public care ; And princely counsel in his face yet shone Majestic, though in ruin : sage he stood, With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies ; his look Drew audience and attention still as night, Or summer's noontide air...
Page 54 - Passions are likened best to floods and streams: The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb; So, when affections yield discourse, it seems The bottom is but shallow whence they come.
Page 172 - There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills(') The air around with beauty ; we inhale The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils Part of its immortality...

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