Sidelights on American Literature

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Century Company, 1922 - 342 pages

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Page 312 - In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. If this Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft — In darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart — How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye!
Page 32 - O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.
Page 233 - WHEN the hours of Day are numbered, And the voices of the Night Wake the better soul, that slumbered, To a holy, calm delight; Ere the evening lamps are lighted, And, like phantoms grim and tall, Shadows from the fitful fire-light Dance upon the parlor wall; Then the forms of the departed Enter at the open door; The beloved, the true-hearted, Come to visit me once more...
Page 241 - Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands. Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng: Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme, That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime.
Page 301 - Arrest us, and cut short our days. 2 Spare us, O Lord, aloud we pray, Nor let our sun go down at noon ; Thy years are one eternal day, And must thy children die so soon ! 3 Yet, in the midst of death and grief, This thought our sorrow shall assuage ; " Our Father and our Saviour live : Christ is the same through every age.
Page 312 - Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom ; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee.
Page 130 - My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel it is, before all, to make you see . That - and no more, and it is everything.
Page 143 - Truth is within ourselves ; it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe. There is an inmost centre in us all, Where truth abides in fulness ; and around, Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect, clear perception— which is truth.
Page 311 - The hills, Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun ; the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between ; The venerable woods, rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green ; and poured round all Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man.

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