A Dictionary of Quotations from the English Poets

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private distribution, 1867 - 715 pages
 

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Page 452 - What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her/ What would he do, Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have/ He would drown the stage with tears And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and appal the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Page 395 - I'll read, his for his love,' XXXIII Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green ; Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy : Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace...
Page 337 - Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Page 269 - See what a grace was seated on this brow ; Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill ; A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal To give the world assurance of a man : This was your husband.
Page 188 - Farewell ! a long farewell, to all my greatness ! This is the state of man : to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him . The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And, — when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, — nips his root, And then he falls, as I do.
Page 164 - This England never did (nor never shall) Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, But when it first did help to wound itself. Now these her princes are come home again, Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them : Nought shall make us rue, if England to itself do rest but true.
Page 121 - Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot ; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods...
Page 129 - There is no death ! What seems so is transition : This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call Death.
Page 270 - Romeo, and when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine, That all the world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish Sun.
Page 494 - My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began ; So is it now I am a man ; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The child is father of the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

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