Death; with other poems

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Page 161 - We are not happy, sweet ! our state Is strange and full of doubt and fear ; More need of words that ills abate ; — Reserve or censure come not near Our sacred friendship, lest there be No solace left for thee and me.
Page 157 - THE flower that smiles to-day To-morrow dies; All that we wish to stay Tempts and then flies. What is this world's delight? Lightning that mocks the night, Brief even as bright.
Page 235 - Live not the stars and mountains ? Are the waves Without a spirit? Are the dropping caves Without a feeling in their silent tears? No, no : — they woo and clasp us to their spheres, Dissolve this clog and clod of clay before Its hour, and merge our soul in the great shore.
Page 57 - How pure The grace, the gentleness, of virtuous age ! Though solemn, not austere ; though wisely dead To passion, and the wildering dreams of hope, Not unalive to tenderness and truth, — The good old man is honour'd and revered, And breathes upon the young-limb'd race around A gray and venerable charm of years.
Page 236 - ... into nature, and to eternity advancing into the fathomless depths of the divine perfections. In this thought there is nothing but what doth honour to these glorified spirits ; provided still it be remembered, that their desire of more proceeds not from their disrelishing what they possess; and the pleasure of a new enjoyment is not with them measured by its novelty (which is a thing merely foreign and accidental), but by its real intrinsic value.
Page 6 - All that we love and feel on Nature's face, Bear dim relations to our common doom. The clouds that blush, and die a beamy death, Or weep themselves away in rain, — the streams That flow along in dying music, — leaves That fade, and drop into the frosty arms Of Winter, there to mingle with dead flowers, — Are all prophetic of our own decay.
Page 237 - I have heard it said that he was a person whose life was not productive of events considerable enough to furnish matter for a history. But they who judge thus, have taken but a superficial view of human life, and do not rightly measure the importance of the different events which happen to different sorts of men.
Page 24 - And, like the sky-bird, hail the bright-cheek'd morn With gleeful song, then o'er the bladed mead To chase the blue-wing'd butterfly, or play With curly streams ; or, led by watchful love, To hear the chorus of the trooping waves, When the young breezes laugh them into life ! Or listen to the mimic...
Page 236 - ... proceeds not from their disrelishing what they possess; and the pleasure of a new enjoyment is not with them measured by its novelty (which is a thing merely foreign and accidental), but by its real intrinsic value. After an acquaintance of many thousand years with the works of God, the beauty and magnificence of the creation fills them with the same pleasing wonder and profound awe which Adam felt himself seized with as he first opened his eyes upon this glorious scene.
Page 23 - Joy lights his brow, and Pleasure rolls his eye, While Innocence, from out the budding lip Darts her young smiles along his rounded cheek. Grief hath not dimm'd the brightness of his form, Love and Affection o'er him spread their wings, And Nature, like a nurse, attends him with Her sweetest looks. The humming bee will bound From out the flower, nor sting his baby hand, The birds sing to him from the sunny tree, And suppliantly the fierce-eyed mastiff fawn Beneath his feet, to court the playful touch.

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