Birds and Poets: With Other Papers

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Hurd and Houghton, 1877 - Literary Criticism - 263 pages

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Page 128 - LINES WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING. I HEARD a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran ; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man.
Page 22 - 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 46 - And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me, And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions, I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not, Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still...
Page 32 - 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 125 - Now fades the last long streak of snow; Now burgeons every maze of quick About the flowering squares ; and thick By ashen roots the violets blow. Now rings the woodland loud and long ; • The distance takes a lovelier hue; And drowned in yonder living blue The lark becomes a sightless song.
Page 252 - Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me, My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it. For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long slow strata piled to rest it on, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care. \ All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me, Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
Page 67 - All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below, — A universe of sky and snow!
Page 32 - Now at heaven's gates she claps her wings, The morn not waking till she sings. Hark, hark, with what a pretty throat, Poor robin redbreast tunes his note; Hark how the jolly cuckoos sing, Cuckoo to welcome in the spring!
Page 251 - In vain the speeding or shyness, In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach, In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder'd bones, In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes, In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low...
Page 129 - Love, now an universal birth, From heart to heart is stealing, From earth to man, from man to earth, — It is the hour of feeling. One moment now may give us more Than fifty years of reason ; Our minds shall drink at every pore The spirit of the season.

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