English poems, ed. with life, intr. and selected notes by R.C. Browne, Volume 1

Front Cover

From inside the book

Selected pages

Contents

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 146 - And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. So much the rather thou, celestial Light, Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate ; there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight.
Page 78 - Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past, That shrunk thy streams; return Sicilian Muse, And call the Vales, and bid them hither cast Their Bells, and Flowerets of a thousand hues.
Page 35 - And when the sun begins to fling His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring To arched walks of twilight groves, And shadows brown...
Page 27 - HENCE, loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings And the night-raven sings ; There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
Page 95 - Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine* chains and penal fire, Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
Page 198 - Of Nature's womb, that in quaternion run Perpetual circle, multiform ; and mix And nourish all things ; let your ceaseless change Vary to our Great Maker still new praise.
Page 88 - AVENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, Forget not ; in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks.
Page 94 - OF Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed, In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth Rose out of Chaos...
Page 56 - He that has light within his own clear breast, May sit i' th' centre, and enjoy bright day : But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts, Benighted walks under the mid-day sun ; Himself is his own dungeon.
Page 145 - And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn ; So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, Or dim suffusion veiled.

Bibliographic information