Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature ...

Front Cover
W. Heinemann, 1905

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 44 - For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue.
Page 37 - A SLUMBER did my spirit seal ; I had no human fears : She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force ; She neither hears nor sees ; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.
Page 45 - I gazed— and gazed— but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
Page 47 - SHE was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn; A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
Page 136 - I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination— What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth— whether it existed before or not...
Page 221 - The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under ; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.
Page 41 - The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colors and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.
Page 42 - I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me ; and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture...
Page 188 - Ye Mariners of England That guard our native seas, Whose flag has braved a thousand years The battle and the breeze ! Your glorious standard launch again To match another foe, And sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow ; While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow.
Page 223 - That orbed maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor By the midnight breezes strewn ; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her and peer ; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,...

Bibliographic information