English Versification: A Complete Practical Guide to the Whole Subject

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Longmans, Green, and Company, 1869 - English language - 154 pages

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Page 105 - Hear the sledges with the bells Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight...
Page 104 - My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: "Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness, — That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
Page 108 - Now strike the golden lyre again: A louder yet, and yet a louder strain, Break his bands of sleep asunder, And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder. Hark, hark! the horrid sound Has raised up his head: As awaked from the dead, And amazed, he stares around. Revenge! revenge!
Page 41 - Everything did banish moan, Save the nightingale alone: She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean'd her breast up-till a thorn, And there sung the dolefull'st ditty, That to hear it was great pity. 'Fie, fie, fie...
Page 95 - When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white; When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruined central tower; When buttress and buttress, alternately, Seem framed of ebon and ivory; When silver edges the imagery, And the scrolls that teach thee...
Page 107 - TWAS at the royal feast for Persia won By Philip's warlike son: Aloft in awful state The godlike hero sate On his imperial throne...
Page 42 - SPAKE full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth. by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine. Stars they are, wherein we read our history, As astrologers and seers of eld ; Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery, Like the burning stars, which they beheld.
Page 102 - Fair daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising sun Has not attained his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to the even-song; And, having prayed together, we Will go with you along.
Page 103 - tis said) Before was never made, But when of old the sons of morning sung, While the Creator great His constellations set, And the well-balanced world on hinges hung ; And cast the dark foundations deep, And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.
Page 82 - Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore — Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; Tis the wind and nothing more.

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