Rousseau and Romanticism, Volume 10

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Houghton Mifflin, 1919 - French literature - 426 pages

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Page 303 - O Lady ! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live; Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud ! And would we aught behold, of higher worth, Than that inanimate cold world allowed To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, Ah ! from the soul itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the Earth — And from the soul itself must there be sent A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, Of all sweet sounds the life and element!
Page 291 - 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!
Page 12 - ... those that observe their similitudes, in case they be such as are but rarely observed by others, are said to have a good wit ; by which, in this occasion, is meant a good fancy.
Page 303 - Ah! then, if mine had been the Painter's hand, To express what then I saw; and add the gleam The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration and the Poet's dream; I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile! Amid a world how different from this!
Page 228 - There was a Being whom my spirit oft Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn, Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor Paved her light steps.
Page 37 - An Original may be said to be of a vegetable nature; it rises spontaneously from the vital root of genius; it grows, it is not made...
Page 212 - O lyric Love, half angel and half bird, And all a wonder and a wild desire, — Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue, And sang a kindred soul out to his face, — Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart — When the first summons from the darkling earth Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, And bared them of the glory...
Page 280 - I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me : and to me, High mountains are a feeling...
Page 232 - I SAID to my heart between sleeping and waking, Thou wild thing, that always art leaping or aching, What black, brown, or fair, in what clime, in what nation, By turns has not taught thee a pit-a-pat-ation...
Page 138 - The dim and shadowy outlines of the superhuman deity fade slowly away from before us ; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure — of Him who made all gods and shall unmake them.

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