The Works of Eminent Masters in Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and Decorative Art, Volumes 1-2; Volume 130

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John Cassell

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Page 81 - Horribly beautiful ! but on the verge, From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, Like Hope upon a death.bed, and, unworn Its steady dyes, while all around is torn By the distracted waters, bears serene Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn : Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene, Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.
Page 77 - The various terrors of that horrid shore ; Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray, And fiercely shed intolerable day ; Those matted woods where birds forget to sing, But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling; Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crown'd, Where the dark scorpion gathers death around ; Where at each step the stranger fears to wake The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake...
Page 164 - Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands. Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng: Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme, That their great imperial city...
Page 256 - Round-hoofd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide, High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong, Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide : Look, what a horse should have he did not lack, Save a proud rider on so proud a back.
Page 273 - Linger awhile upon some bending planks That lean against a streamlet's rushy banks, And watch intently Nature's gentle doings : They will be found softer than ring-dove's cooings.
Page 62 - How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica. Look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins: Such harmony is in immortal souls...
Page 81 - The roar of waters ! — from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice The fall of waters ! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss ; The hell of waters ! where they howl and hiss. And boil in endless torture ; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set...
Page 81 - Lo ! where it comes like an eternity, As if to sweep down all things in its track, Charming the eye with dread — a matchless cataract...
Page 62 - Night, sable goddess ! from her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world. Silence how dead ! and darkness how profound ! Nor eye nor listening ear an object finds ; Creation sleeps. Tis as the general pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause ; An awful pause ! prophetic of her end.
Page 90 - who takes for his model such forms as nature produces, and confines himself to an exact imitation of them, will never attain to what is perfectly beautiful. For the works of nature are full of disproportion, and fall very short of the true standard of beauty. So that Phidias, when he formed his Jupiter, did not copy any object ever presented to his sight; but contemplated only that image which he had conceived in his mind from Homer's description.

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