The Novels of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe ...: To which is Prefixed, a Memoir of the Life of the Author, Volume 10

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Page xxxviii - Fountain heads and pathless groves, Places which pale passion loves ! Moonlight walks, when all the fowls Are warmly housed save bats and owls ! A midnight bell, a parting groan, These are the sounds we feed upon ; Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley : Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.
Page 90 - Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court? Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, — The seasons' difference : as the icy fang And churlish chiding of the winter's wind, Which when it bites and blows upon my body, Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say, This is no flattery : these are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Page 269 - Can such things be, And overcome us like a summer's cloud, Without our special wonder?
Page 248 - I care not, fortune, what you me deny ; You cannot rob me of free nature's grace ; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face, You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve : Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave : Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.
Page 157 - The sun is in the heaven, and the proud day, Attended with the pleasures of the world, Is all too wanton and too full of gawds To give me audience. If the midnight bell Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth, Sound on into the drowsy race of night...
Page 325 - The sun had just sunk below the top of the mountains she was descending, whose long shadow stretched athwart the valley ; but his sloping rays, shooting through an opening of the cliffs, touched with a yellow gleam the summits of the forest that hung upon the opposite steeps, and streamed in full splendour upon the towers and battlements of a castle that spread its extensive ramparts along the brow of a precipice above. The splendour of these illumined objects was heightened by the contrasted shade...
Page 75 - O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife! Thou know'st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives. Lady M. But in them nature's copy's not eterne. Macb. There's comfort yet, they are assailable; Then be thou jocund: ere the bat hath flown His cloister'd flight; ere to black Hecate's summons The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done A deed of dreadful note.
Page 267 - Can Music's voice, can Beauty's eye, Can Painting's glowing hand supply A charm so suited to my mind, As blows this hollow gust of wind? As drops this little weeping rill, Soft tinkling down the moss-grown hill; While, through the west, where sinks the crimson day, Meek Twilight slowly sails, and waves her banners gray?
Page 325 - ... of evening. Silent, lonely, and sublime, it seemed to stand the sovereign of the scene, and to frown defiance on all who dared to invade its solitary reign. As the twilight deepened, its features became more awful in obscurity, and Emily continued to gaze, till its clustering towers were alone seen rising over the tops of the woods, beneath whose thick shade the carriages soon after began to ascend.
Page 235 - IX. 0 how canst thou renounce the boundless store Of charms which Nature to her votary yields! The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields; All that the genial ray of morning gilds, And all that echoes to the song of even...

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