The Vital Study of Literature, and Other EssaysC. H. Sergel, 1912 - 380 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
æsthetic agnosticism artist beauty become behold comic consciousness criticism Dante Gabriel Rossetti death delight divine doth doubt earth Ellis and Yeats English essay eternal faith fate fear feeling flesh forever genius George Meredith gods Goethe hast hath heart heaven hero holy human ideal imagination inspiration instinct Leopardi literary literature live lover Luvah Maeterlinck man's matter means ment Meredith mind Molière moral mystery mystic nature never original paraphrase passion perhaps phrase poem poet poetic poetry praise prophetic prose Psalm reader rhythm Rossetti sake Schiller sense smile song Sophocles soul spirit stanza strophe suggestions surely sweet symbol terza rima Tharmas thee things thou thought tion translation true truth unto Urizen Urthona utterance verse vision vital W. B. Yeats Walt Whitman Wayfarer Whitman William Blake words worship Yahweh Young Mother Zeus
Popular passages
Page 95 - TELL me now in what hidden way is Lady Flora the lovely Roman ? Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais, Neither of them the fairer woman? Where is Echo, beheld of no man, Only heard on river and mere, — She whose beauty was more than human? But where are the snows of yester-year?
Page 339 - But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first, Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes, With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, For you and the coffins all of you, O death...
Page 341 - For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping, now I have heard you, Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake, And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours, A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.
Page 315 - Now I a fourfold vision see And a fourfold vision is given to me ; Tis fourfold in my supreme delight, And threefold in soft Beulah's night, And twofold always. May God us keep From single vision, and Newton's sleep ! I also enclose you some ballads by Mr.
Page 96 - Whose bitter sins were set aside even thus Though to the Fiend his bounden service was. Oh help me, lest in vain for me should pass (Sweet Virgin that shalt have no loss thereby !) The blessed Host and sacring of the Mass. Even in this faith I choose to live and die.
Page 323 - Rhyming, to be a necessary and indispensible part of Verse. But I soon found that in the mouth of a true Orator such monotony was not only awkward, but as much a bondage as rhyme itself.
Page 341 - I escape, never more the reverberations, Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me, Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there in the night, By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon, The messenger there arous'd, the fire, the sweet hell within, The unknown want, the destiny of me. O give me the clew ! (it lurks in the night here somewhere), O if I am to have so much, let me have more...
Page 80 - All things transitory But as symbols are sent : Earth's insufficiency Here grows to Event : The Indescribable, Here it is done : The Woman-Soul leadeth us Upward and on!
Page 93 - At the tale told, while one soul uttered it, The other wept : a pang so pitiable That I was seized, like death...
Page 95 - But where are the snows of yester-year ? White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, With a voice like any mermaiden, — Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice, And Ermengarde the lady of Maine, — And that good Joan whom Englishmen At Rouen doomed and burned her there, — Mother of God, where are they then ? . . . But where are the snows of yester-year...