Genius in Sunshine and Shadow

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Ticknor, 1886 - Literature - 309 pages

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Page 210 - Your name from hence immortal life shall have, Though I, once gone, to all the world must die. The earth can yield me but a common grave. When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie. Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read. And tongues to be your being shall rehearse When all the breathers of this world are dead. You still shall live — such virtue hath my pen — Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
Page 142 - He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow ; He who surpasses or subdues mankind Must look down on the hate of those below.
Page 107 - Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, " Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did ; " and so, if I might be judge, " God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.
Page 276 - A man so various that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome : Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Page 134 - GOING TO THE WARS Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, To war and arms I fly. True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.
Page 278 - The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman has, with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny ; but content myself with wishing — that I may be one of those whose follies cease with their youth ; and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.
Page 11 - Thy sunken eye's unearthly light To him is welcome as the sight Of sky and stars to prisoned men ; Thy grasp is welcome as the hand Of brother in a foreign land ; Thy summons welcome as the cry That told the Indian isles were nigh To the world-seeking Genoese, When the land wind, from woods of palm, And orange-groves, and fields of balm, Blew o'er the Haytian seas.
Page 41 - I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man-of-war; Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. CVL, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention.
Page 41 - Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man-of-war ; Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning ; solid, but slow in his performances.
Page 220 - It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.

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