Half-hours with the best authors, selected by C. Knight, Volume 2

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Page 276 - ... pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.
Page 44 - And ye five other wand'ring fires that move In mystic dance, not without song, resound His praise, who out of darkness call'd up light. Air, and ye elements L the eldest birth Of nature's womb, that in quaternion run Perpetual circle, multiform, and mix, And nourish all things ; let your ceaseless change Vary to our Great Maker still new praise.
Page 178 - How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful, is man! How passing wonder He who made him such, Who centred in our make such strange extremes!
Page 98 - No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end.
Page 240 - THE poetry of earth is never dead : When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead ; That is the Grasshopper's...
Page 44 - Breathe soft or loud ; and wave your tops, ye pines, With every plant, in sign of worship wave. Fountains, and ye that warble, as ye flow, Melodious murmurs, warbling, tune his praise. Join voices, all ye living souls : ye birds, That singing up to heaven's gate ascend, Bear on your wings, and in your notes his praise...
Page 185 - A soldier, an' please your Reverence, said I, prays as often, of his own accord, as a parson ; and when he is fighting for his king, and for his own life, and for his honour too, he has the most reason to pray to God of any one in the whole world. 'Twas well said of thee, Trim, said my uncle Toby. But when a soldier, said I, an...
Page 251 - All this, and much more than I can say, or have time to say, the reader must enter into, before he can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological tortures impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights, I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or Indostan.
Page 251 - I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit, or in secret rooms. I was the idol ; I was the priest ; I was worshipped ; I was sacrificed.
Page 239 - In lowly dale, fast by a river's side, With woody hill o'er hill cncompass'd round, A most enchanting wizard did abide, Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found. It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground ; And there a season atween June and May, Half prankt with spring, with summer half imbrown'd, A listless climate made, where sooth to say, No living wight could work, ne cared even for play.

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