The Function of the Poet and Other EssaysHoughton Mifflin, 1920 - 223 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
æsthetic ancient artist beauty better called character Charles Eliot Norton charm comic Cotton Mather criticism Dante dead Dickens divine Don Quixote doubt England English essay Esther Johnson example expression faculty fancy feel Ferris Greenslet forever Forster Gabriel Harvey genius give Goethe Graham's Magazine hand HARVARD COLLEGE hexameter hope Howells human nature humor humorist ideal imagination James James Russell Lowell Kalevala kind language laugh laughter lectures Lepidus less literary literature Longfellow look Lowell Lowell's mean memory Miles Standish mind modern monomania mood moral never once passage passion perfect perhaps phrase Plutarch poem poet poetic poetry prose Quaker reader satire satirist seems sense sentiment Shakespeare singing song speech spirit statues style Swift sympathy tells Thackeray things thought tion true understanding verse volume Whittier wonder words writing youth
Popular passages
Page 44 - As when some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits, and his powers, In their confluctions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour.
Page 94 - At her feet he bowed he fell, he lay down at her feet he bowed, he fell where he bowed, there he fell down dead...
Page 88 - Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Page 168 - Achilles' image stood his spear, Grip'd in an armed hand; himself behind Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind : A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, Stood for the whole to be imagined.
Page 86 - And ever and anon he beat The doubling drum with furious heat ; And though sometimes, each dreary pause between, Dejected Pity at his side Her soul-subduing voice applied, Yet still he kept his wild unaltered mien, While each strained ball of sight seemed bursting from his head.
Page 46 - ... from a lucky hitting upon what is strange, sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the purpose ; often it consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language.
Page 72 - How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December's bareness everywhere! And yet this time removed was summer's time; The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widow'd wombs after their lords...
Page 6 - tis true I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear...
Page 71 - But I remember Two miles on this side of the fort, the road Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow, And winds with short turns down the precipice...
Page 51 - This indigested vomit of the sea Fell to the Dutch by just propriety. Glad then, as miners who have found the ore, They, with mad labour...