The works of the English poets. With prefaces, biographical and critical, by S. Johnson, Volume 47

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Page 259 - Night primeval and of Chaos old ! Before her, fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. As one by one, at dread Medea's strain, The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain ; As Argus
Page 260 - Light dies before thy uncreating word : Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness buries all.
Page 213 - The moon-struck prophet felt the madding hour : Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night, To blot out order, and extinguish light, Of dull and venal a new world to mould, And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold.
Page 104 - For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head With all such reading as was never read : For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, goddess, and about it : So spins the silkworm small its slender store, And labours till it clouds itself all o'er.
Page 97 - Blasphem'd his gods, the dice, and damn'd his fate ; Then gnaw'd his pen, then dash'd it on the ground, Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound ! Plung'd for his sense, but found no bottom there, Yet wrote and flounder'd on in mere despair.
Page 205 - Furthermore, it drove out of England (for that season) the Italian Opera, which had carried all before it for ten years.
Page 26 - ... or science, which have not been touched upon by others ; we have little else left us, but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights. If a reader examines Horace's Art of Poetry...
Page 205 - The person who acted Polly, till then obscure, became all at once the favourite of the town ; her pictures were engraved, and sold in great numbers ; her life written, books of letters and verses to her published, and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jests.
Page 204 - This piece was received with greater applause than was ever known. Besides being acted in London sixtythree days without interruption, and renewed the next season with equal applause, it spread into all the great towns of England; was played in many places to the thirtieth and fortieth time ; at Bath and Bristol fifty, &c.
Page 196 - The forests dance, the rivers upward rise, Whales sport in woods, and dolphins in the skies ; And last, to give the whole creation grace, Lo ! one vast egg produces human race. Joy fills his soul, joy innocent of thought : 'What power,' he cries, 'what power these wonders wrought?

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