Poetical Works

Front Cover
Printed at the Stanhope Press by C. Whittingham, 1808
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 27 - Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. Blest madman, who could every hour employ With something new to wish or to enjoy...
Page 111 - My thoughtless youth was wing'd with vain desires, My manhood, long misled by wandering fires, Follow'd false lights, and, when their glimpse was gone, My pride struck out new sparkles of her own. Such was I, such by nature still I am ; Be thine the glory, and be mine the shame. Good life be now my task : my doubts are done ; What more could fright my faith than Three in One...
Page 110 - Tis true she bounded by and tripped so light, They had not time to take a steady sight ; For truth has such a face and such a mien As to be loved needs only to be seen.
Page 16 - He sought the storms ; but for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide...
Page 16 - Got, while his soul did huddled notions try, And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy ; In friendship false, implacable in hate, Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the State; To compass this the triple bond he broke; The pillars of the public safety shook, And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke; Then, seiz'd with fear, yet still affecting fame, Usurp'da Patriot's all-atoning name.
Page 41 - ... fancy, or the variation, driving or moulding of that thought, as the judgment represents it proper to the subject; the third is Elocution, or the Art of clothing and adorning that thought so found and varied, in apt, significant and sounding words: the quickness of the Imagination is seen in the Invention, the fertility in the Fancy, and the accuracy in the Expression.
Page 9 - Thro' the azure deep of air : Yet oft before his infant eyes would run Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray, With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun : Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, Beneath the Good how far — but far above the Great. THE BARD. A Pindaric Ode. I. i. seize thee, ruthless King ! Confusion on thy banners wait ; Tho' fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing, They mock the air with idle state.
Page 111 - But, gracious God, how well dost thou provide For erring judgments an unerring guide! Thy throne is darkness in the abyss of light, A blaze of glory that forbids the sight. O teach me to believe thee thus conceal'd, And search no farther than thyself reveal'd; But her alone for my director take, Whom thou hast promised never to forsake!
Page 40 - Gull'd with a patriot's name, whose modern sense Is one that would by law supplant his prince; The people's brave, the politician's tool; Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.
Page 40 - The composition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit; and wit in the poet, or Wit writing (if you will give me leave to use a school-distinction), is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, till it springs the quarry it hunted after; or, without metaphor, which searches over all...

Bibliographic information