Sketches from Life, Volume 1

Front Cover
H. Colburn, 1846

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 82 - And thy arch and wily ways, And thy store of other praise. Blithe of heart, from week to week Thou dost play at hide-and-seek ; While the patient primrose sits...
Page 105 - Oh ! that I were The viewless spirit of a lovely sound, A living voice, a breathing harmony, A bodiless enjoyment, born and dying With the blest Tone that made me.
Page xxxii - His thoughts were as a pyramid up-piled, On whose far top an angel stood and smiled — Yet, in his heart, was he a simple child.
Page xii - ... and colonial appointments, can reward his services and prevent his starving. But for the author there is nothing but his pen, till that and life are worn to the stump ; and then, with good fortune, perhaps on his death-bed he receives a pension — and equals, it may be, for a few months, the income of a retired butler...
Page xxxi - Added to this, they contain not a thought, not a line, from which the most anxious parent would guard his child. They may be read with safety by the most simple, and yet they contain enough of truth and character to interest the most reflective.
Page xxxi - HE taught the cheerfulness that still is ours The sweetness that still lurks in human powers; If heaven be full of stars, the earth has flowers. His was the searching thought, the glowing mind; The gentle will, to others soon resigned; But, more than all, the feeling just and kind. His pleasures were as melodies from reeds — Sweet books, deep music and unselfish deeds. Finding immortal flowers in human weeds. True to his kind, nor of himself afraid, He...
Page xii - And so, on the sudden loss of the situation in which he had frittered away his higher and more delicate genius, in all the drudgery that a party exacts from its defender of the press, Laman Blanchard was thrown again upon the world, to shift as he might, and subsist as he could. His practice in periodical writing was now considerable ; his versatility was extreme. He was marked by publishers and editors as a useful contributor, and so his livelihood was secure. From a variety of sources thus he contrived,...
Page ix - EVENING. ALREADY hath the day grown grey with age ; And in the west, like to a conqueror crowned, Is faint with too much glory. On the ground He flings his dazzling arms ; and, as a sage, Prepares him for a cloud-hung hermitage, Where Meditation meets him at the door ; And all around — on wall, and roof, and floor, Some pensive star unfolds its silver page Of truth, which God's own hand hath testified. Sweet Eve...

Bibliographic information