A School History of English Literature, Volume 2

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Blackie & son, 1898 - English literature

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Page 145 - 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 146 - When first on this delightful land he spreads His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, Glist'ring with dew; fragrant the fertile earth After soft showers ; and sweet the coming on Of grateful evening mild...
Page 216 - In the first rank of these did Zimri ' stand, A man so various that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome : Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts and nothing long ; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Page 119 - What wondrous life is this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons, as I pass, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Page 137 - Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
Page 109 - ASK ME No MORE ASK me no more where Jove bestows, When June is past, the fading rose ; For in your beauty's orient deep These flowers, as in their causes, sleep. Ask me no more whither do stray The golden atoms of the day; For in pure love heaven did prepare Those powders to enrich your hair. Ask me no more whither doth haste The nightingale when May is past; For in your sweet dividing throat She winters and keeps warm her note.
Page 149 - As one who, long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe Among the pleasant villages and farms Adjoin'd, from each thing met conceives delight ; The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine, Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound...
Page 12 - When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste...
Page 155 - THREE Poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed; The next in majesty •, In both the last. The force of Nature could no further go ; To make a third, she joined the former two.
Page 23 - Should I turn upon the true prince ? Why, thou knowest, I am as valiant as Hercules: but beware instinct; the lion will not touch the true prince.

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