The Poet's Praise: From Homer to Swinburne |
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Common terms and phrases
Ęschylus AUBREY DE VERE bard beauty Ben Jonson breath Burns Byron Canto charm Chaucer COLERIDGE COWPER crown D. G. ROSSETTI dark dead Death divine doth Dryden E. B. BROWNING earth English Epic Poetry eyes F. T. PALGRAVE fame fire flame flowers genius George glory grace grave HARTLEY COLERIDGE hast hath heart heaven Homer honour Horace immortal JOHN Jonson Keats LANDOR LEIGH HUNT light lines live Lord LOWELL lyre MATTHEW ARNOLD melody Memory mighty Milton MORTIMER COLLINS Muse Nature's numbers o'er passion Pastorals Poems poet's Poetry Poets POPE praise rhyme sang Shakespeare Shelley shine sing singer smile sonnet soul Spenser spirit star strain sublime sung sweet SWINBURNE SYDNEY DOBELL T. B. ALDRICH tears tender Tennyson thee THEODORE WATTS thine things THOMAS thou thought thy song tongue truth verse Vindication of Poesy Vision of Poets voice wild WILLIAM wings Wordsworth
Popular passages
Page 20 - Come, read to me some poem, Some simple and heartfelt lay, That shall soothe this restless feeling, And banish the thoughts of day. Not from the grand old masters, Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of time.
Page 157 - Ah Ben! Say how or when Shall we, thy guests, Meet at those lyric feasts, Made at the Sun, The Dog, the Triple Tun ; Where we such clusters had, As made us nobly wild, not mad ? And yet each verse of thine Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine.
Page 118 - Homer ruled as his demesne ; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken ; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific — and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise — Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Page 186 - Most musical of mourners, weep again! Lament anew, Urania! — He died, Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride The priest, the slave, and the liberticide Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified, Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light.
Page 143 - SHAKESPEARE Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask — Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill, Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty, Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea, Making the heaven of heavens his dwellingplace, Spares but the cloudy border of his base To the...
Page 128 - This Figure, that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut ; Wherein the Graver had a strife With Nature, to outdo the life.
Page 72 - Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word...
Page 127 - Euripides, and Sophocles to us, Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, To life again, to hear thy buskin tread And shake a stage : or when thy socks were on, Leave thee alone for the comparison Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Page 183 - Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
Page 334 - O lyric Love, half angel and half bird, And all a wonder and a wild desire, — Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue, And sang a kindred soul out to his face, — Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart — When the first summons from the darkling earth Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, And bared them of the glory — to drop down, To toil for man, to suffer or to die, — This is the same voice : can thy soul know change ? Hail...