The English Poets: Wordsworth to Tennyson

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Thomas Humphry Ward
Macmillan and Company, 1883
 

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Page 280 - Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll [ Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; Man marks the earth with ruin — his control Stops with the shore ; — upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy...
Page 28 - SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love. A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye ! — Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me...
Page 363 - The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given. The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar ! Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
Page 405 - Fade, far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan...
Page 411 - And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel ; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease ; For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.
Page 278 - O'er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning ; By the struggling moonbeam's misty light And the lantern dimly burning.
Page 281 - Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, Calm or convulsed, — in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving; — boundless, endless, and sublime, — The image of Eternity, — the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
Page 331 - Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own ! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! Be through my lips to unawakened earth...
Page 407 - Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth...
Page 407 - Darkling I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy high requiem become a sod.

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