Rousseau and Romanticism

Front Cover
Houghton, Mifflin, 1919 - Romanticism - 426 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 282 - My soul is an enchanted boat, Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing; And thine doth like an angel sit Beside a helm conducting it; Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing. It seems to float ever, for ever. Upon that many-winding river. Between mountains, woods, abysses, A paradise of wildernesses! Till, like one in slumber bound, Borne to the ocean, I float down, around, Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound: Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its...
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...
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 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 13 - This worthless present was designed you long before it was a play; when it was only a confused mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and then either chosen or rejected by the judgment; it was yours, my Lord, before I could call it mine.
Page 192 - So that in the first place I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.
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 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.
Page 280 - I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me : and to me, High mountains are a feeling...

Bibliographic information