Short readings from English poetry, chosen and arranged with notes by H.A. Hertz

Front Cover
Helen A Hertz
1879
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 75 - That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west; Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed, whereon it must expire, Consumed with that...
Page 182 - Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is; What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The...
Page 215 - She dwelt among the untrodden ways, Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love: A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! — Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be: But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me...
Page 155 - And when I am forgotten, as I shall be, And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention Of me more must be heard of, say I taught thee Say Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory, And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour, Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it.
Page 174 - O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," — that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Page 142 - Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Page 69 - NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried ; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning ; By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, And the lantern dimly burning.
Page 144 - Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil, that men do, lives after them ; The good is oft interred with their bones ; So let it be with Caesar.
Page 206 - HAIL to thee, blithe spirit ! Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
Page 139 - Of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach; Of being taken by the insolent foe, And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence, And portance in my travels' history: Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven, It was my hint to speak, — such was the process; And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders.

Bibliographic information