The poetical reader, with notes and questions by A.W. Buchan

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Alexander Winton Buchan
1861
 

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Page 74 - What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain ? What fields, or waves, or mountains ? What shapes of sky or plain ? What love of thine own kind ? what ignorance of pain ? With thy clear, keen joyance Languor cannot be : Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee : Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
Page 49 - I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER. I REMEMBER, I remember The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn : He never came a wink too soon, Nor brought too long a day, But now I often wish the night Had borne my breath away ! I remember, I remember...
Page 27 - Whither, midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?
Page 92 - The seasons' difference ; as, the icy fang, And churlish chiding of the winter's wind ; Which when it bites and blows upon my body, Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say, — This is no flattery : these are counsellors, That feelingly persuade me what I am. Sweet are the uses of adversity ; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head ; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and...
Page 72 - Careless their merits or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began.
Page 96 - How many thousand of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep ! O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness...
Page 91 - She should have died hereafter ; There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.
Page 58 - Let us be patient ! These severe afflictions Not from the ground arise, But oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume this dark disguise. We see but dimly through the mists and vapors Amid these earthly damps What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers May be heaven's distant lamps.
Page 59 - Not as a child shall we again behold her ; For when with raptures wild In our embraces we again enfold her, She will not be a child ; But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, Clothed with celestial grace ; And beautiful with all the soul's expansion Shall we behold her face.
Page 91 - I have almost forgot the taste of fears : The time has been, my senses would have cool'd To hear a night-shriek ; and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in't : I have supp'd full with horrors ; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me.

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