Festival of Song: A Series of Evenings with the Poets

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Bunce and Huntington, 1866 - American poetry - 376 pages

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Page 69 - Now came still evening on, and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad ; Silence accompanied ; for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale, She all night long her amorous descant sung...
Page 68 - These are thy glorious works, Parent of good, Almighty ! Thine this universal frame, Thus wondrous fair: Thyself how wondrous then ! Unspeakable! who sitt'st above these heavens, To us invisible, or dimly seen In these thy lowest works ; yet these declare Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine.
Page 39 - GOING TO THE WARS Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, To war and arms I fly. True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.
Page 276 - Like a poet hidden, In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not...
Page 21 - With a bare bodkin ? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life ; But that the dread of something after death, — The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, — puzzles the will ; And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of?
Page 274 - I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.
Page 135 - He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all. And, as a bird each fond endearment tries, To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.
Page 31 - Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments : love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove : O no ; it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken ; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth 's unknown, although his height be taken.
Page 63 - The Oracles are dumb ; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving : No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
Page 220 - Oft in the stilly night Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me: The smiles, the tears Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken! Thus in the stilly night Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Sad memory brings the light Of other days around me.

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