The Remains of Henry Kirke White of Nottingham: Late of St. John's College, Cambridge; with an Account of His Life, Volume 1

Front Cover
Evert Duyckinck, 1820
 

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 250 - Unhappy White ! while life was in its spring,* And thy young muse just waved her joyous wing, The spoiler came ; and all thy promise fair Has sought the grave, to sleep for ever there. Oh ! what a noble heart was here undone, When Science...
Page 250 - Twas thine own genius gave the final blow, And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low: So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, View'd his own feather on the fatal dart, And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart; Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel, He nursed the pinion which impell'd the steel; While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest . Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast.
Page 25 - They have been sadly misinformed respecting me ; this review goes before me wherever I turn my steps ; it haunts me incessantly, and I am persuaded it is an instrument in the hands of Satan to drive me to distraction. I must leave Nottingham.
Page 250 - Henry Kirke White died at Cambridge in October, 1806, in consequence of too much exertion in the pursuit of studies that would have matured a mind which disease and poverty could not impair, and which death itself destroyed rather than subdued. His poems abound in such beauties as must impress the reader with the liveliest regret that so short a period was allotted to talents, which would have dignified even the sacred functions he was destined to assume.
Page 41 - He passed the whole term in preparing himself for this ; reading for college subjects in bed, in his walks, or, as he says, where, when, and how he could ; never having a moment to spare, and often going to his tutor without having read at all.
Page 12 - Nottingham, in which it is necessary for an attorney to plead; and he wished to qualify himself for a speaker as well as a sound lawyer. With the profession in which he was placed he was well pleased, and suffered no pursuit, numerous as his pursuits were, to interfere in the slightest degree with its duties. Yet he soon began to have higher aspirations, and to cast a wistful eye toward the Universities...
Page 6 - For I, confined in gloomy school, Must own the pedant's iron rule, And, far from sylvan shades and bowers, In durance vile must pass the hours; There con the scholiast's dreary lines, Where no bright ray of genius shines, And close to rugged learning cling, While laughs around the jocund spring. How gladly would my soul forego All that arithmeticians know, Or stiff grammarians quaintly teach, Or all that industry can reach, To taste each morn of all the...
Page 34 - Then since this world is vain, And volatile, and fleet, Why should I lay up earthly joys, Where rust corrupts, and moth destroys, And cares and sorrows eat ? Why fly from ill With anxious skill, When soon this hand will freeze, this throbbing heart be still.
Page 65 - Nor undelightful is the solemn noon Of night, when, haply wakeful, from my couch I start: lo, all is motionless around! Roars not the rushing wind; the sons of men And every beast in mute oblivion lie; All Nature's hushed in silence and in sleep: O then how fearful is it to reflect That through the still globe's awful solitude No being wakes but me!
Page 295 - O'er the uplands now to rove, While thy modest ray serene Gilds the wide surrounding scene ; And to watch thee riding high In the blue vault of the sky, Where no thin vapour intercepts thy ray, But in unclouded majesty thou walkest on thy way.

Bibliographic information