Lectures and Essays, Volume 1

Front Cover
Macmillan and Company, limited, 1905 - English literature - 740 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 27 - But now farewell. I am going a long way With these thou see'st — if indeed I go (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) — To the island-valley of Avilion ; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.
Page 22 - O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art As glorious to this night, being o'er my head, As is a winged messenger of heaven Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him, When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds And sails upon the bosom of the air.
Page 71 - O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand...
Page 372 - Life! I know not what thou art, But know that thou and I must part; And when, or how, or where we met, I own to me's a secret yet...
Page 85 - O Proserpina, For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall From Dis's waggon ! daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's breath...
Page 313 - Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather by the ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines were, and it chanced that nobody but myself remembered that they occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorne's, called by the unpromising title of
Page 375 - And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.
Page 328 - Shall I, like a fool, quoth he, For a haughty hizzie die ? She may gae to — France for me ! Ha, ha, the wooing o't.
Page 308 - What is title? What is treasure? What is reputation's care ? If we lead a life of pleasure 'Tis no matter how or where...
Page 225 - And to urge another argument of a parallel nature: if Christianity were once abolished, how could the Freethinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning be able to find another subject so calculated in all points whereon to display their abilities ? What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those whose genius, by continual practice, hath been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would therefore never be able to shine or distinguish...

Bibliographic information