Anthologia Anglica, a new selection from the English poets from Spenser to Shelley, with short literary notices by H. Williams

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Page 58 - A blank, my lord. She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought; And, with a green and yellow melancholy, She sat like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief.
Page 34 - The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Page 280 - Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply: And many a holy text around she strews That teach the rustic moralist to die. For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?
Page 163 - Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine...
Page 432 - He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again.
Page 143 - HENCE, loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy ! Find out some uncouth cell Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings And the night-raven sings ; There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
Page 215 - A man so various that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome : Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Page 76 - Who is Silvia ? what is she, That all our swains commend her ? Holy, fair and wise is she ; The heaven such grace did lend her That she might admired be. Is she kind as she is fair ? for beauty lives with kindness : Love doth to her eyes repair, To help him of his blindness ; And, being help'd, inhabits there. Then to Silvia let us sing, That Silvia is excelling ; She excels each mortal thing Upon the dull earth dwelling ; To her let us garlands bring.
Page 277 - Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
Page 32 - All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation. He was naturally learned. He needed not the spectacles of books to read nature. He looked inwards, and found her there.

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