Lectures on the English Poets: Delivered at the Surrey Institution

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Taylor and Hessey, 1818 - English literature - 331 pages

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Page 145 - Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
Page 321 - The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order...
Page 71 - To th' instruments divine respondence meet ; The silver sounding instruments did meet With the base murmure of the waters fall ; The waters fall with difference discreet, Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call ; The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.
Page 113 - ... an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intense study, (which I take to be my portion in this life,) joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die.
Page 271 - Kate soon will be a woefu' woman! Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg, And win the keystane of the brig; There, at them thou thy tail may toss, A running stream they dare na cross! But ere the keystane she could make, The fient a tail she had to shake; For Nannie, far before the rest, Hard upon noble Maggie prest, And flew at Tarn wi' furious ettle; But little wist she Maggie's mettle!
Page 21 - Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream : The genius, and the mortal instruments, Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.
Page 273 - But hark ! a rap comes gently to the door ; Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same, Tells how a neebor lad cam' o'er the moor, To do some errands, and convoy her hame. The wily mother sees the conscious flame Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek ; With heart-struck anxious care, inquires his name, While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak : Weel pleased the mother hears it's nae wild, worthless rake. Wi...
Page 117 - And, missing thee, I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven green To behold the wandering moon, Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray Through the heaven's wide pathless way, And oft, as if her head she bowed, Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Page 243 - I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride; Of Him who walked in glory and in joy Following his plough, along the mountain-side : By our own spirits are we deified : We poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
Page 199 - Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store Of charms which Nature to her votary yields ! The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields ; All that the genial ray of morning gilds, And all that echoes to the song of even, All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields, And all the dread magnificence of Heaven, Oh, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven ! X.

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