Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, Volume 1Carey and Hart, 1842 |
Common terms and phrases
admiration ballads beautiful behold beneath Betty Foy birds Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine braes breath bright Caroline Bowles cheerful child child is father Christopher North clouds cottage cottage ornée creature dark dead dear delight divine dream earth Excursion eyes fear feeling flowers genius gentle glory hand happy hath hear heard heart heaven hour human imagination immortal language light living look Lord Byron Lyrical Ballads magnetic wonders Milton mind morning mountains nature never night o'er once passage passion perhaps Peter Bell pleasure poem poet poet's poetic diction poetry prose reader round Scotland seems shadows Shakspeare sight silent sing sleep smile song sonnet soul sound speak spirit stars sublime sunshine sweet taste tears thee thing thou thought tion touch trees verse voice whole wonder words Wordsworth Wordsworthian writings young
Popular passages
Page 271 - What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower...
Page 270 - Hence in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore...
Page 243 - Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect...
Page 205 - ... the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.
Page 293 - Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
Page 264 - The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse...
Page 294 - All things that love the sun are out of doors; The sky rejoices in the morning's birth; The grass is bright with rain-drops; — on the moors The hare is running races in her mirth; And with her feet she from the plashy earth Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.
Page 209 - Phoebus lifts his golden fire : The birds in vain their amorous descant join, Or cheerful fields resume their green attire. These ears, alas ! for other notes repine ; A different object do these eyes require ; My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine ; And in my breast the imperfect joys expire...
Page 207 - The language, too, of these men has been adopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived...
Page 293 - MILTON ! thou should'st be living at this hour : England hath need of thee : she is a fen Of stagnant waters : altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men ; Oh ! raise us up, return to us again ; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.