classic: results 49–72 of 142

I made a posie, while the day ran by:

Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie

            My life within this band.

But time did becken to the flowers, and they

By noon most cunningly did steal away,

            And wither'd in my hand.

A great number of people nowadays are beginning broadly to insinuate that there are no such things as ghosts, or spiritual beings visible to mortal sight. Even Sir Walter Scott is turned renegade, and, with his stories made up of half-and-half, like Nathaniel Gow's toddy, is trying to throw cold water on the most certain, though most impalpable, phenomena of human nature. The bodies are daft. Heaven mend their wits! Before they had ventured to assert such things, I wish they had been where I have often been; or, in particular, where the Laird of Birkendelly was on St. Lawrence's Eve, in the year 1777, and sundry times subsequent to that.

Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me—thy soft breast

Shall pant to mine—bend o'er me—thy sweet eyes,

And loosened hair, and breathing lips, arms

Drawing me to thee—these build up a screen

To shut me in with thee, and from all fear,

So that I might unlock the sleepless brood

Of fancies from my soul…

Mr. Augustus Minns was a bachelor, of about forty as he said—of about eight-and-forty as his friends said. He was always exceedingly clean, precise, and tidy; perhaps somewhat priggish, and the most retiring man in the world. He usually wore a brown frock-coat without a wrinkle, light inexplicables without a spot, a neat neckerchief with a remarkably neat tie, and boots without a fault; moreover, he always carried a brown silk umbrella with an ivory handle.

O solitude! If I must with thee dwell,

   Let it not be among the jumbled heap

   Of murky buildings;—climb with me the steep,

Nature's Observatory

Now prompts the Muse poetic lays,

And high my bosom beats with love of Praise!

But, Chatterton! methinks I hear thy name,

For cold my Fancy grows, and dead each Hope of Fame.

Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come,

For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom,

And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest,

And love is burning diamonds in my true lover's breast…

To ride on these cars is always an adventure. Since we are in war-time, the drivers are men unfit for active service: cripples and hunchbacks. So they have the spirit of the devil in them. The ride becomes a steeple-chase. Hurray! we have leapt in a clear jump over the canal bridges—now for the four-lane corner. With a shriek and a trail of sparks we are clear again. To be sure, a tram often leaps the rails—but what matter!

If you have forgotten water lilies floating

On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade,

If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance…

One star is lighted in the west,

      Two in the zenith glow.

For a moment I have forgotten

      Wars and women who mourn—

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound…

"A model of the Manchester branch of the Young Women's Christian Association," said Harvey.

"Are there any lions?" asked Eric hopefully. He had been reading Roman history and thought that where you found Christians you might reasonably expect to find a few lions.

"Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child; "that would be since your sister's time."

"Her tragedy?" asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.

"You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon," said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.

My soul lives in my body's house,

      And you have both the house and her—

But sometimes she is less your own

      Than a wild, gay adventurer…

Heart, we will forget him,

   You and I, tonight!

You must forget the warmth he gave,

   I will forget the light.

I've got an arrow here;

      Loving the hand that sent it,

I the dart revere.

Oh plunge me deep in love—put out

My senses, leave me deaf and blind,

Swept by the tempest of your love…

What though these years of ours be fleeting?

What though the years of youth be flown?

I'll mock old Tempus with repeating,

"I love my love and her alone!"

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee.

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if you can.

The furniture was wonderfully unpretending, old, and snug. No new shining mahogany, sticky with undried varnish; no uncomfortably luxurious ottomans, and sofas too fine to use, vexed you in this sedate apartment. It is a thing which every sensible American should learn from every sensible Englishman, that glare and glitter, gimcracks and gewgaws, are not indispensable to domestic solacement. The American Benedick snatches, down-town, a tough chop in a gilded show-box; the English bachelor leisurely dines at home on that incomparable South Down of his, off a plain deal board.

Immediately I found myself standing in a spacious place intolerably lighted by long rows of windows, focusing inward the snowy scene without.

At rows of blank-looking counters sat rows of blank-looking girls, with blank, white folders in their blank hands, all blankly folding blank paper.

The Brain—is wider than the Sky—

For—put them side by side—

The one the other will contain

With ease—and You—beside—

His sunken pitfalls of eyes were ringed by indigo halos, and played with an innocuous sort of lightning: the gleam without the bolt. The whole man was dripping. He stood in a puddle on the bare oak floor: his strange walking-stick vertically resting at his side.

In a fat, greasy soil, that's full of snails,

I'll dig a grave deep down, where I may sleep

Spreading my bones at ease, to drowse in deep

Oblivion, as a shark within the wave.