Theology in the English Poets: Cowper--Coleridge--Wordsworth and Burns

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AMS Press, 1875 - Literary Criticism - 339 pages

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Page 80 - And what if all of animated nature Be but organic harps diversely framed, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of all?
Page 103 - Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank The spectacle : sensation, soul, and form All melted into him ; they swallowed up His animal being ; in them did he live, And by them did he live ; they were his life. In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living God, Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired.
Page 98 - Three years she grew in sun and shower, Then Nature said, 'A lovelier flower On earth was never sown ; This child I to myself will take; She shall be mine, and I will make A lady of my own. 'Myself will to my darling be " Both law and impulse : and with me The girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power To kindle or restrain...
Page 126 - I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell ; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely ; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy ; for murmurings from within Were heard, sonorous cadences ! whereby, To his belief, the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of Faith...
Page 121 - How exquisitely the individual Mind (And the progressive powers perhaps no less Of the whole species) to the external World Is fitted : — and how exquisitely, too — Theme this but little heard of among men — The external World is fitted to the Mind; And the creation (by no lower name Can it be called) which they with blended might Accomplish : — this is our high argument.
Page 282 - What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind...
Page 333 - tis He alone Decidedly can try us, He knows each chord its various tone, Each spring its various bias : Then at the balance let's be mute, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted.
Page 313 - Ev'n thou who mournst the daisy's fate, That fate is thine No distant date; Stern Ruin's plough-share drives, elate, Full on thy bloom, Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight, Shall be thy doom.
Page 317 - Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water: thou preparest them corn, when thou hast so provided for it.
Page 88 - The moving Moon went up the sky, And no where did abide: Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside — Her beams bemocked the sultry main, Like April hoar-frost spread; But where the ship's huge shadow lay, The charmed water burnt alway A still and awful red.

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