The Classic Poets: Their Lives and Their Times, with the Epics Epitomised

Front Cover
Smith, Elder, & Company, 1879 - Epic poetry - 452 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 399 - Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed, In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth Rose out of Chaos...
Page 419 - Now came still evening on, and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad ; Silence accompanied ; for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale ; She all night long her amorous descant sung...
Page 416 - Me miserable ! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath and infinite despair? Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threatening to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.
Page 417 - So farewell hope ; and with hope, farewell fear ; Farewell remorse : all good to me is lost ; Evil be thou my good : by thee, at least, Divided empire with heaven's King I hold : By thee, and more than half, perhaps, will reign, As man, ere long, and this new world, shall know.
Page 436 - Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Page 409 - And time, and place, are lost ; where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce, Strive here for mastery...
Page 412 - Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day...
Page 422 - These are thy glorious works, Parent of good, Almighty ! thine this universal frame, Thus wondrous fair : thyself how wondrous then ! Unspeakable ! who sitt'st above these Heavens To us invisible, or dimly seen In these thy lowest works ; yet these declare Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine.
Page 358 - AND is there care in heaven ? And is there love In heavenly spirits to these creatures base, That may compassion of their evils move ? There is : else much more wretched were the case Of men than beasts. But O ! th...
Page 417 - So on he fares, and to the border comes Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green, As with a rural mound, the champaign head Of a steep wilderness...

Bibliographic information