The Literary and Scientific Class Book: Embracing the Leading Facts and Principles of Science. Illustrated by Engravings, with Many Difficult Words Explained at the Heads of the Lessons, and Questions Annexed for Examination; Designed as Exercises for the Reading and Study of the Higher Classes in Common Schools. Selected from the Rev. John Platts' Literary and Scientific Class Book, and from Verious Other Sources, and Adapted to the Wants and Condition of Youth in the United States

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J. & J.W. Prentiss, 1830 - 320 pages
 

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Page 272 - TO him who in the love of nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware.
Page 272 - A man of a polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures that the vulgar are not capable of receiving. He can converse with a picture, and find an agreeable companion in a statue. He meets with a secret refreshment in a description, and often feels a greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows, than another does in the possession.
Page 274 - 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. Then THY sun...
Page 77 - O'er mountain, tower, and town, Or, mirrored in the ocean vast, A thousand fathoms down ! As fresh in yon horizon dark, As young thy beauties seem. As when the eagle from the ark First sported in thy beam. For, faithful to its sacred page, Heaven still rebuilds thy span • Nor lets the type grow pale with age That first spoke peace to man.
Page 76 - And yet, fair bow, no fabling dreams, But words of the Most High, Have told why first thy robe of beams Was woven in the sky.
Page 20 - The world is full of poetry — the air Is living with its spirit ; and the waves Dance to the music of its melodies, And sparkle in its brightness. Earth is veiled, And mantled with its beauty; and the walls That close the universe with crystal in, Are eloquent with voices, that proclaim The unseen glories of immensity, In harmonies, too perfect, and too high, For aught but beings of celestial mould, And speak to man in one eternal hymn, Unfading beauty, and unyielding power.
Page 55 - ... stupendous alike for its force and its flexibility, — for the prodigious power which it can exert, and the ease, and precision, and ductility, with which it can be varied, distributed, and applied. The trunk of an elephant, that can pick up a pin, or rend an oak, is as nothing to it.
Page 121 - Day, too, hath many a star To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they : Through the blue fields afar, Unseen, they follow in his flaming way : Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim, Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.
Page 251 - As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude ; Men, who their duties know, But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain...
Page 122 - ... gaze, And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast ; And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night, Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right. And, therefore, bards of old, Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood, Did in thy beams behold A beauteous type of that unchanging good, That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

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