The Writings of John Burroughs: Birds and poets, with other papers

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Houghton, Mifflin, & Company, 1895 - Natural history

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Page 15 - Leave to the nightingale her shady wood ; A privacy of glorious light is thine; Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood Of harmony, with instinct more divine; Type of the wise who soar, but never roam; True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home...
Page 22 - The same whom in my school-boy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky. To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen. And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again. O blessed Bird ! the earth we pace Again appears to be An unsubstantial, faery place; That is fit home for Thee ! 1804.
Page 110 - I HEARD a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did nature link The human soul that through me ran ; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man.
Page 14 - What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
Page 221 - Or, crown'd with attributes of woe Like glories, move his course, and show That life is not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd with the shocks of doom To shape and use. Arise and fly The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die.
Page 6 - Less Philomel will deign a song In her sweetest saddest plight, Smoothing the rugged brow of Night, While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke Gently o'er the accustomed oak; Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy!
Page 191 - I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now...
Page 20 - Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings, Passing at home a patient life, Broods in the grass while her husband sings: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink: Brood, kind creature; you need not fear Thieves and robbers while I am here. Chee, chee, chee.
Page 23 - What time the daisy decks the green, Thy certain voice we hear; Hast thou a star to guide thy path, Or mark the rolling year? Delightful visitant ! with thee I hail the time of flowers, And hear the sound of music sweet, From birds among the bowers.
Page 35 - CROSS the narrow beach we flit, •^*- One little sandpiper and I, And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered drift-wood, bleached and dry The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit, One little sandpiper and I.

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