Essays of Elia, Volume 1

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J. M. Dent and Company, 1888 - 279 pages

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Page 159 - Does straight its own resemblance find, Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas ; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide : There like a bird it sits and sings, Then whets and claps its silver wings ; And till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light.
Page 128 - Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head ; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.
Page 39 - How have I seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or...
Page 194 - Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W n; and as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness and difficulty and denial meant in maidens — when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of representment, that I became in doubt which of them stood...
Page 39 - Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. CVL, with the English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, .tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention.
Page 226 - MANKIND, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cook's Holiday.
Page 190 - Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by...
Page 236 - I forget the decision. His sauce should be considered : decidedly, a few bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic ; you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are ; but consider, he is a weakling, — a flower.
Page 189 - CHILDREN love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk...
Page 191 - I in particular used to spend many hours by myself in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned into marble with them...

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