Birds and Poets. With Other Papers

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D. Douglas, 1884 - 313 pages

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Page 26 - Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire ; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. In the golden lightning « Of the sunken sun, O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run ; Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
Page 27 - Leave to the nightingale her shady wood ; A privacy of glorious light is thine; Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood Of harmony, with instinct more divine; Type of the wise who soar, but never roam; True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home...
Page 257 - Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot ; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice ; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world...
Page 27 - All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed.
Page 37 - Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery; The same whom in my school-boy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky. To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green ; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen.
Page 38 - Sweet bird ! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear ; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year...
Page 252 - Nor any more youth or age than there is now, And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Page 13 - I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of grey plovers in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry.
Page 151 - My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky : So was it when my life began ; So is it now I am a man ; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die ! " The child is father of the man ; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.
Page 27 - UP with me ! up with me into the clouds ! For thy song, Lark, is strong; Up with me, up with me into the clouds ! Singing, singing, With clouds and sky about thee ringing, Lift me, guide me till I find That spot which seems so to thy mind...

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