Sketches in Italy and Greece

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Smith, Elder, & Company, 1874 - Greece - 339 pages

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195

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Page 223 - How charming is divine Philosophy ! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns.
Page 244 - And thinking of the days that are no more. Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Page 174 - Hortaturque viros, clavumque ad litora torquet. At gravis, ut fundo vix tandem redditus imo est, Jam senior madidaque fluens in veste, Menoetes Summa petit scopuli siccaque in rupe resedit. 180 Ilium et labentem Teucri et risere natantem, Et salsos rident revomentem pectore fluctus.
Page 193 - What song the syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these ossuaries entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept with princes and counsellors, might admit a wide solution.
Page 194 - 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 nattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the farstretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, hie j'acet!
Page 115 - Will no one tell me what she sings? — Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again?
Page 18 - There, too, in those long, solitary vigils, the Spirit of God came upon him, and the spirit of Nature was even as God's Spirit, and he sang : ' Laudato sia Dio mio Signore, con tutte le creature, specialmente messer lo frate sole ; per suor luna, e per le stelle ; per frate vento e per 1'aire, e nuvolo, e sereno e ogni tempo.
Page 210 - Where on the ^Egean shore a city stands Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil ; Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits Or hospitable, in her sweet recess, City or suburban, studious walks and shades ; See there the olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long ; There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound Of bees...
Page 177 - But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men, without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids ? Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it ; Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have...
Page 258 - Lasciasser d' operare ogni lor arte ; Ma con piena letizia, l' ore prime Cantando, riceveano intra le foglie, Che tenevan bordone alle sue rime Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie Per la pineta, in sul lito di Chiassi, Quand' Eolo scirocco fuor discioglie.

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