Birds and Poets: With Other Papers

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Hurd and Houghton, 1877 - Literary Criticism - 263 pages

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Page 23 - 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 23 - 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 222 - 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 30 - Cuckoo ! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice ? While I am lying on the grass Thy twofold shout I hear, From hill to hill it seems to pass, At once far off, and near. Though babbling only to the Vale, Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours.
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 45 - Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night When the loosed storm breaks furiously? My driftwood -fire will burn so bright ! To what warm shelter canst thou fly ? I do not fear for thee, though wroth The tempest rushes through the sky : For are we not God's children both, Thou, little sandpiper, and I ? CELIA THAXTER.
Page 31 - 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. And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again.
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 250 - Or, crown'd with attributes of woe Like glories, move his course, and show That life is not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd with the shocks of doom To shape and use.
Page 31 - What time the daisy decks the green, Thy certain voice we hear; Hast thou a star to guide thy path, Or mark the rolling year? Delightful visitant ! with thee I hail the time of flowers, And hear the sound of music sweet, From birds among the bowers.

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