The Works of the English Poets: With Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, Volume 48

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Samuel Johnson
C. Bathurst, 1779 - English poetry

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Page 51 - Rocks rich in gems, and mountains big with mines, That on the high equator ridgy rise...
Page 34 - But happy they, the happiest of their kind, Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend. Tis not the coarser tie of human laws, Unnatural oft, and foreign to the mind, That binds their peace ; but harmony itself, Attuning all their passions into love ; Where friendship...
Page 165 - THESE, as they change, ALMIGHTY FATHER, these Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is full of THEE. Forth in the pleasing Spring THY beauty walks, THY tenderness and love. Wide flush the fields ; the softening air is balm ; Echo the mountains round ; the forest smiles ; And every sense, and every heart is joy. Then comes THY glory in the Summer months, With light and heat refulgent.
Page 136 - Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man His annual visit. Half afraid, he first Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor, Eyes all the smiling family askance, And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is; Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs Attract his slender feet.
Page 138 - Ah little think they, while they dance along, How many feel, this very moment, death And all the sad variety of pain.
Page 15 - But who can paint Like Nature? Can imagination boast, Amid its gay creation, hues like hers ? Or can it mix them with that matchless skill, And lose them in each other, as appears In every bud that blows...
Page 167 - Great source of day ! best image here below Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide, From world to world, the vital ocean round, On Nature write with every beam His praise.
Page 165 - Shoots full perfection through the swelling year: And oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks, And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve, By brooks and groves in hollow-whispering gales. Thy bounty shines in Autumn unconfined, And spreads a common feast for all that lives.
Page 39 - With quickened step Brown night retires. Young day pours in apace And opens all the lawny prospect wide. The dripping rock, the mountain's misty top Swell on the sight and brighten with the dawn. Blue through the dusk the smoking currents shine, And from the bladed field the fearful hare Limps awkward, while along the forest glade The wild deer trip and often turning gaze At early passenger.
Page 186 - Aerial music in the warbling wind, At distance rising oft, by small degrees, Nearer and nearer came, till o'er the trees It hung, and breath'd such soul-dissolving airs, As did, alas!

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