Gray: Poetry & Prose

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Clarendon Press, 1926 - English literature - 176 pages
 

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Page 66 - The next with dirges due in sad array Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne, — Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.
Page 63 - Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals of the poor.
Page 45 - Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car, Wide o'er the fields of glory bear Two coursers of ethereal race, With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace.
Page 22 - In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire: The birds in vain their amorous descant join, Or cheerful fields resume their green attire: These ears alas! for other notes repine; A different object do these eyes require; My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine; And in my breast the imperfect joys expire...
Page 62 - THE CURFEW tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds...
Page 158 - Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.
Page 45 - This pencil take (she said) whose colours clear Richly paint the vernal year : Thine, too, these golden keys, immortal Boy ! This can unlock the gates of Joy ; Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears.
Page 13 - In the character of his elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader ; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours.
Page 43 - Man's feeble race what ills await ! . Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain, Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train, And Death, sad refuge from the storms of fate ! The fond complaint, my song, disprove, And justify the laws of Jove.
Page 45 - And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone : and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.

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