Memoirs of the Loves of the Poets: Biographical Sketches of Women Celebrated in Ancient and Modern Poetry

Front Cover
Ticknor and Fields, 1858 - Women in literature - 517 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 188 - No longer mourn for me when I am dead Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell : Nay, if you read this line, remember not The hand that writ it ; for I love you so That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot If thinking on me then should make you woe.
Page 504 - Sweet records, promises as sweet; A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food, For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
Page 271 - When Love with unconfined wings Hovers within my gates, And my divine Althea brings To whisper at the grates; When I lie tangled in her hair, And fettered to her eye, The birds that wanton in the air Know no such liberty.
Page 253 - O'er other creatures : yet when I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems And in herself complete, so well to know • Her own, that what she wills to do or say Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best: All higher knowledge in her presence falls Degraded ; Wisdom in discourse with her Loses discountenanc'd, and like Folly shows...
Page 185 - The forward violet thus did I chide: Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, If not from my love's breath?
Page 268 - 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...
Page 419 - Yet empty of all good, wherein consists Woman's domestic honour and chief praise; Bred only and completed to the taste Of lustful appetence, to sing, to dance, To dress, and troll the tongue, and roll the eye...
Page 430 - tis his fancy to run ; At night he reclines on his Thetis's breast. So when I am wearied with wandering all day ; To thee, my delight, in the evening I come : No matter what beauties I saw in my way : They were but my visits, but thou art my home.
Page 208 - That very time I saw, but thou couldst not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd : a certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the west, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts : But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
Page 188 - ... this line, remember not The hand that writ it; for I love you so That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot If thinking on me then should make you woe. O, if, I say, you look upon this verse When I perhaps compounded am with clay, Do not so much as my poor name rehearse, But let your love even with my life decay, Lest the wise world should look into your moan And mock you with me after I am gone.

Bibliographic information