Emily Morton: with sketches from life and critical essays

Front Cover

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 124 - Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind...
Page 123 - It is as it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own ; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it.
Page 41 - Alas ! the love of women ! it is known To be a lovely and a fearful thing ; For all of theirs upon that die is thrown, And if 'tis lost, life hath no more to bring To them but mockeries of the past alone...
Page 122 - Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
Page 123 - ... sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world...
Page 126 - He paused, as if revolving in his soul Some weighty matter; then, with fervent voice And an impassioned majesty, exclaimed — " O for the coming of that glorious time When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth And best protection, this imperial Realm While she exacts allegiance, shall admit An obligation, on her part, to teach, Them who are born to serve her and obey; Binding herself by statute 1 to secure For all the children whom her soil maintains The rudiments of letters, and inform The mind...
Page 137 - Shall I be left forgotten in the dust, When Fate, relenting, lets the flower revive? Shall Nature's voice, to man alone unjust, Bid him, though doom'd to perish, hope to live? Is it for this fair Virtue oft must strive With disappointment, penury, and pain ? No : Heaven's immortal spring shall yet arrive, And man's majestic beauty bloom again, Bright through th' eternal year of Love's triumphant reign.
Page 4 - In sooth, I know not why I am so sad : It wearies me ; you say it wearies you ; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn ; And such a want-wit sadness makes of me. That I have much ado to know myself.
Page 115 - Hesiod, all three nothing else but poets. Nay, let any history be brought that can say any writers were there before them, if they were not men of the same skill, as Orpheus, Linus, and some other are named, who, having been the first of that country that made pens deliverers of their knowledge to their posterity, may justly challenge to be called their fathers in learning.
Page 102 - Then shalt thou know beauty but lent, And wish and want as I have done. Now cease, my lute, this is the last Labour, that thou and I shall waste; And ended is that we begun : Now is this song both sung and past; My lute, be still, for I have done.

Bibliographic information