English Sonnets: A Selection

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John Dennis
H.S. King & Company, 1873 - Sonnets, English - 238 pages

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Page 31 - Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.
Page 29 - 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 48 - When in the chronicle of wasted time I see descriptions of the fairest wights, And beauty making beautiful old rhyme, In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights ; Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best, Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, I see their antique pen would have express'd Even such a beauty as you master now.
Page 102 - IT is a beauteous evening, calm and free ; The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity . The gentleness of heaven is on the sea : Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with His eternal motion make A sound like thunder — everlastingly.
Page 55 - come let us kiss and part, — Nay I have done, you get no more of me; And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart, That thus so cleanly I myself can free...
Page 35 - Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Page 42 - Why is my verse so barren of new pride, So far from variation or quick change ? Why, with the time, do I not glance aside To new-found methods and to compounds strange ? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, • That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
Page 26 - Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date...
Page 210 - Still roll ; where all the aspects of misery Predominate; whose strong effects are such As he must bear, being powerless to redress; And that unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is man...
Page 3 - The turtle to her make hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; The fishes...

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