Poems and Essays

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Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1897 - Citizenship - 236 pages

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Page 67 - Trances the heart through chanting choirs, And through the priest the mind inspires. The word unto the prophet spoken Was writ on tables yet unbroken; The word by seers or sibyls told, In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, Still floats upon the morning wind, Still whispers to the willing mind. One accent of the Holy Ghost The heedless world hath never lost.
Page 141 - God, find the earth below not in unison with these, but are hindered from action by the disgust which the principles on which business is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die of disgust, some of them suicides.
Page 61 - I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough ; I brought him home, in his nest, at even ; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky; — He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye.
Page 62 - Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity; Again I saw, again I heard. The rolling river, the morning bird; Beauty through my senses stole; I yielded myself to the perfect whole.
Page 92 - We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace.
Page 65 - The hand that rounded Peter's dome And groined the aisles of Christian Rome Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew; — The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Page 75 - It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion ; it is easy in solitude to live after our own ; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Page 7 - God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor. Think ye I made this ball A field of havoc and war, 10 Where tyrants great and tyrants small Might harry the weak and poor?
Page 117 - Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given ; forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.
Page 1 - BY the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.

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