Occasions: A Volume of Essays on Such Divers Themes as Laughter and Cathedrals, Town and Profanity, Gardens and Bibliomania, Etc |
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Common terms and phrases
adventure amateur gardeners Anatomy of Melancholy Aristophanes Baudelaire beauty of ships become believe bookman Caliban cause Charles Lamb cheering colour coracle curious dead death delight desire discuss the weather doomed dream essay eternal face fact faith familiar fanity fear feel fire George Meredith getting lost grace grey habit happy harbour Harley Street heart Heaton Mersey heaven hope human humour idea illusion imagine incunabula infinite inspired instinctive lack laughter lèse-majesté light live look Lord Lord Alvanley lose Marseilles matter ment mind mysterious never ourselves pass perhaps poets posterity prejudice prejudiced priest profanity reader reading aloud reason reverence ribaldry rich seilles Shaftesbury Shakespeare Sir John Falstaff small-talk soul spirit spring springfret streets sure tell things thought topic tragedy tragic true votive candle watching wind wonder wood words write of Town wrong
Popular passages
Page 159 - Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst : Oh hear!
Page 131 - Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding; for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.
Page 93 - Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything that tends to laughter, more than I invent, or is invented on me : I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.
Page 158 - Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these ? O, I have ta'en Too little care of this ! Take physic, pomp ; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them, And show the heavens more just.
Page 146 - But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days; Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays, And one by one back in the Closet lays.
Page 140 - Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, These are the seals of that most firm assurance >° Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength; And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, Mother of many acts and hours, should free The serpent that would clasp her with his length; These are the spells by which to reassume ij An empire o'er the disentangled doom.
Page 55 - O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul !' This was followed by a general laugh.
Page 103 - All this world is heavy with the promise of greater things, and a day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars.
Page 140 - To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates...
Page 96 - Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold, And the mate of the Nancy brig, And a bo'sun tight, and a midshipmite, And the crew of the captain's gig.