Elizabethan Literature

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H. Holt, 1914 - England - 256 pages

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Page 149 - Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
Page 102 - If all the pens that ever poets held Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts, And every sweetness that inspired their hearts, Their minds, and muses on admired themes ; If all the heavenly quintessence they still From their immortal flowers of poesy, Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive The highest reaches of a human wit ; If these had made one poem's period, And all combined in beauty's worthiness, Yet should there hover in their restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least,...
Page 121 - Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow in effect into another Nature, in making things either better than Nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in Nature, as the Heroes, Demigods, Cyclops...
Page 125 - O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised : thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hie jacet.
Page 252 - In such a night Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew And saw the lion's shadow ere himself And ran dismay'd away. Lor. In such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea banks and waft her love To come again to Carthage.
Page 252 - Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. — Methinks, I hear Antony call; I see him rouse himself To praise my noble act; I hear him mock The luck of...
Page 124 - All the powder of the Revenge to the last barrel was now spent, all her pikes broken, forty of her best men slain, and the most part of the rest hurt.
Page 225 - But deeds and language such as men do use, And persons such as Comedy would choose, When she would show an image of the times. And sport with human follies, not with crimes; Except we make 'em such, by loving still Our popular errors, when we know they're ill.
Page 59 - By him lay heavy Sleep, the cousin of Death, Flat on the ground and still as any stone, A very corpse, save yielding forth a breath. Small keep took he whom Fortune frowned on Or whom she lifted up into the throne Of high renown; but as a living death, So, dead alive, of life he drew the breath. The...
Page 135 - So that if the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which as ships pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?

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