One Hundred Choice Selections in Poetry and Prose: Both New and Old; Embracing the Most Popular Patriotic Effusions of the Day, the Rarest Poetical Gems, the Finest Specimens of Oratory, and a Fund of Mirth and Humor ...

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P. Garrett, 1866 - Readers - 192 pages

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Page 116 - God pity them both ! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these :
Page 108 - Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.
Page 116 - TO him who in the love of nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware.
Page 72 - But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore, What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking "Nevermore.
Page 126 - Look here, upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command...
Page 109 - With a bare bodkin ? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of ? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all...
Page 24 - And shook it forth with a royal will. ' Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country's flag,
Page 143 - This many summers in a sea of glory; But far beyond my depth : my high-blown pride At length broke under me ; and now has left me, Weary, and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.
Page 118 - So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan that moves To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Page 138 - Liberty first, and Union afterwards, — but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all. its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, — Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.

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