Literary and Social Essays

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Harper & brothers, 1894 - Literary Criticism - 293 pages
 

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Page 210 - In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb.
Page 150 - Such songs have power to quiet The restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction That follows after prayer. Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.
Page 248 - The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,— the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods— rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,— Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man.
Page 58 - They rowed her in across the rolling foam, The cruel crawling foam, The cruel hungry foam, To her grave beside the sea: But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home Across the sands of Dee!
Page 83 - No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land.
Page 171 - The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour: The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Page 8 - By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.
Page 9 - Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.
Page 68 - I know not whence your faith came, but while we were lads together at a country college, gathering blue-berries in study-hours under those tall academic pines, or watching the great logs as they tumbled along the current of the Androscoggin, or shooting pigeons and gray squirrels in the woods, or bat-fowling in the summer twilight, or catching trouts in that shadowy little stream which, I suppose, is still wandering riverward through the forest...
Page 219 - The wild flowers who will stoop to number ? A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them ; — Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them ! Nay, grieve not for the dead alone Whose song has told their hearts...

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