The Poems of Thomas Love Peacock

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G. Routledge, 1906 - 404 pages
 

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Page 269 - I am he they call Old Care, Here on board we will thee lift. No : I may not enter there. Wherefore so ? 'Tis Jove's decree, In a bowl Care may not be ; In a bowl Care may not be.
Page 341 - The mountain sheep are sweeter, But the valley sheep are fatter; We therefore deemed it meeter To carry off the latter. We made an expedition; We met an host and quelled it; We forced a strong position, And killed the men who held it.
Page 386 - Two urns by Jove's high throne have ever stood, The source of evil one, and one of good ; From thence the cup of mortal man he fills, Blessings to these, to those distributes ills; To most, he mingles both : the wretch decreed To taste the bad, unmix'd, is cursed indeed; Pursued by wrongs, by meagre famine driven, He wanders, outcast both of earth and heaven.
Page 13 - Europe has produced several illustrious women who have sustained with glory the weight of empire ; nor is our own age destitute of such distinguished characters. But if we except the doubtful achievements of Semiramis, Zenobia is perhaps the only female whose superior genius broke through the servile indolence imposed on her sex by the climate and manners of Asia.
Page 396 - I am always repeating to myself your lines from Sophocles: Man's happiest lot is not to be: And when we tread life's thorny steep, Most blest are they, who earliest free Descend to death's eternal sleep.
Page 61 - I dug, beneath the cypress shade, What well might seem an elfin's grave ; And every pledge in earth I laid, That erst thy false affection gave. I pressed them down the sod beneath ; I placed one mossy stone above ; And twined the rose's fading wreath Around the sepulchre of love. Frail as thy love, the flowers were dead, Ere yet the evening sun was set : But years shall see the cypress spread, Immutable as my regret.
Page 26 - The fire had resounded in the halls : and the voice of the people is heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook, there, its lonely head : the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out from the windows, the rank grass of the wall waved round his head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina, silence is in the house of her fathers.
Page 351 - The rich man has a cellar, And a ready butler by him ; The poor must steer For his pint of beer Where the saint can't choose but spy him. The rich man's painted windows Hide the concerts of the quality ; The poor can but share A crack'd fiddle in the air, Which offends all sound morality. The rich man is invisible In the crowd of his gay society ; But the poor man's delight Is a sore in the sight, And a stench in the nose of piety.
Page 26 - Why dost thou build the ball, son of the winged days? Thou lookest from thy towers to-day : yet a few years, and the blast of the desert comes ; it howls in thy empty court, and whistles round thy half-worn shield.
Page xviii - While the historian and the philosopher are advancing in, and accelerating, the progress of knowledge, the poet is wallowing in the rubbish of departed ignorance, and raking up the ashes of dead savages to find gewgaws and rattles for the grown babies of the age.

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