Essays in Criticism: Second seriesThis 1888 volume offers a collection of literary essays by the British poet and critic, including essays on John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. |
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admirers Amiel Amiel's Journal Anna Karénine beauty Burns Byron called century character charm Chaucer classic Count Tolstoi criticism death diction Dryden English poetry English poets excellence Fanny Brawne faults feel France French genuine gift give glory Godwin Goethe Gray Gray's happiness Harriet Harriet Westbrook historic estimate Hogg honour Jesus Johnny Keats judgment Keats kind Kitty language Leopardi letters Levine Levine's literary literature living Lord Byron Lord Macaulay Madame Bovary manner matter Milton mind Molière moral ideas nature never novel passage passion Paul Bourget Pembroke Hall perhaps poems poet poet's poetic truth praise produced Professor Dowden prose real estimate recognise religion Sainte-Beuve Scherer Scotch sense seriousness Shakespeare Shelley Shelley's sincerity sort soul speak spirit style superiority tells things thought tion true verse virtue Voltaire volume whole words Wordsworth Wordsworth's poetry Wordsworthian writes Wronsky wrote
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Page 45 - Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang, To step aside is human : One point must still be greatly dark, The moving Why they do it ; And just as lamely can ye mark, How far perhaps they rue it. Who made the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us, He knows each chord its various tone, Each spring its various bias : Then at the balance let's be mute, We never can adjust it ; What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted.
Page 63 - Memory and her siren daughters ; but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases.
Page 196 - He heard it, but he heeded not ; his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away ; He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize ; But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother, — he, their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday.
Page 28 - But enough of this : there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty.
Page 47 - Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met, or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
Page 19 - Led on the eternal Spring. Not that fair field Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers, Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world...
Page 18 - Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge, And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them With deaf 'ning clamour in the slippery clouds, That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Page 172 - And in each pillar there is a ring, And in each ring there is a chain; That iron is a cankering thing, For in these limbs its teeth remain...
Page 153 - Must hear Humanity in fields and groves Pipe solitary anguish; or must hang Brooding above the fierce confederate storm Of sorrow, barricadoed evermore Within the walls of cities — may these sounds Have their authentic comment; that even these Hearing, I be not downcast or forlorn!
Page 31 - It is the spoudaiotes, the high and excellent seriousness, which Aristotle assigns as one of the grand virtues of poetry. The substance of Chaucer's poetry, his view of things and his criticism of life, has largeness, freedom, shrewdness, benignity; but it has not this high seriousness. Homer's criticism of life has it, Dante's has it, Shakespeare's has it. It is this chiefly which gives to our spirits what they can rest upon; and with the increasing...
Bibliographic information
| Title | Essays in Criticism: Second series Essays in Criticism: Second Series, Matthew Arnold Literature Online - Literary Theory Macmillan's colonial library |
| Author | Matthew Arnold |
| Publisher | Macmillan, 1888 |
| Length | 331 pages |
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