The Vital Study of Literature, and Other Essays |
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Common terms and phrases
æsthetic agnosticism artist beauty become behold comic consciousness criticism Dante Gabriel Rossetti death delight divine doth doubt earth Ellis and Yeats English essay eternal faith fate fear feeling flesh forever genius George Meredith gods Goethe hast hath heart heaven hero holy human ideal imagination inspiration instinct Leopardi literary literature live lover Luvah Maeterlinck man's matter means ment Meredith mind Molière moral mystery mystic nature never original paraphrase passion perhaps phrase poem poet poetic poetry praise prophetic prose Psalm reader rhythm Rossetti sake Schiller sense smile song Sophocles soul spirit stanza strophe suggestions surely sweet symbol terza rima Tharmas thee things thou thought tion translation true truth unto Urizen Urthona utterance verse vision vital W. B. Yeats Walt Whitman Wayfarer Whitman William Blake words worship Yahweh Young Mother Zeus
Popular passages
Page 316 - Hear the voice of the Bard! Who Present, Past, and Future, sees; Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walk'd among the ancient trees, Calling the lapsed Soul, And weeping in the evening dew; That might controll The starry pole, And fallen, fallen light renew!
Page 339 - But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first, Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes, With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, For you and the coffins all of you O death. ); 8 O western orb sailing the heaven, Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk'd...
Page 95 - But where are the snows of yester-year ? White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, With a voice like any mermaiden, — Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice, And Ermengarde the lady of Maine, — And that good Joan whom Englishmen At Rouen doomed and burned her there, — Mother of God, where are they then ? . . . But where are the snows of yester-year...
Page 80 - All things transitory But as symbols are sent : Earth's insufficiency Here grows to Event : The Indescribable, Here it is done : The Woman-Soul leadeth us Upward and on!
Page 323 - Rhyming, to be a necessary and indispensible part of Verse. But I soon found that in the mouth of a true Orator such monotony was not only awkward, but as much a bondage as rhyme itself.
Page 342 - Which I do not forget, But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother, That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paumanok's gray beach, With the thousand responsive songs at random, My own songs awaked from that hour, And with them the key, the word up from the waves, The word of the sweetest song and all songs...
Page 342 - Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death, And again death, death, death, death, Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous'd child's heart, But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet, Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over, Death, death, death, death, death.
Page 341 - Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me, Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there in the night, By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon, The messenger there arous'd, the fire, the sweet hell within, The unknown want, the destiny of me.
Page 314 - For double the vision my eyes do see, And a double vision is always with me.
Page 234 - So mine are these new fruitings rich The simple to the common brings; I keep the youth of souls who pitch Their joy in this old heart of things: Who feel the Coming young as aye, Thrice hopeful on the ground we plough; Alive for life, awake to die; One voice to cheer the seedling Now. Full lasting is the song, though he, The singer, passes: lasting too, For souls not lent in usury, The rapture of the forward view.