The Ring and the Book, Volume 2 |
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Arezzo Augustinian babe bade beside brain break breath brother brow Caponsacchi Catullus cheat child Church Civita cockatrice confess Count Guido Court crime dare deed dowry eyes face fault fear Fiesole flesh flight fool Franceschini friends gate to heaven give guilty hand hate head heart hell husband innocence judge lady leave letters look lords Malchus marriage married mind Molinist mother never night once Paolo Perugia pet lamb Pietro placket plague play Pompilia priest prove punishment revenge rochet Rome round Saint Saint George Saint Peter sake shame Sirs smile soul stand stood succubus sweet lords tale tell there's thing thought told took tooth And claw true truth turn twixt Violante wife wine word worst wrong yourselves
Popular passages
Page 220 - Pompilia will be presently with God; I am, on earth, as good as out of it, A relegated priest; when exile ends, I mean to do my duty and live long. She and I are mere strangers now: but priests Should study passion; how else cure mankind, Who come for help in passionate extremes?
Page 213 - Not to die so much as slide out of life, Pushed by the general horror and common hate Low, lower, — left o' the very ledge of things, I seem to see him catch convulsively One by one at all honest forms of life, At reason, order, decency and use — To cramp him and get foothold by at least; And still they disengage them from his clutch. "What, you are he, then, had Pompilia once "And so forwent her? Take not up with us!
Page 161 - The one turn more — and there at the window stood, Framed in its black square length, with lamp in hand, Pompilia ; the same great, grave, griefful air As stands i' the dusk, on altar that I know, Left alone with one moonbeam in her cell, Our Lady of all the Sorrows. Ere I knelt — Assured myself that she was flesh and blood — She had looked one look and vanished.
Page 127 - Justinian's Pandects only make precise What simply sparkled in men's eyes before, Twitched in their brow or quivered on their lip, Waited the speech they called but would not come.
Page 215 - By the better trick, the insult he spared Christ — Lure him the lure o' the letters, Aretine ! Lick him o'er slimy-smooth with jelly-filth O' the verse-and-prose pollution in love's guise ! The cockatrice is with the basilisk ! I95° There let them grapple, denizens o...
Page 221 - To have to do with nothing but the true, The good, the eternal — and these, not alone In the main current of the general life, But small experiences of every day, Concerns of the particular hearth and home: To learn not only by a comet's rush But a rose's birth, — not by the grandeur, God — But the comfort, Christ.
Page 172 - I paced the city: it was the first Spring. By the invasion I lay passive to, In rushed new things, the old were rapt away; Alike abolished - the imprisonment Of the outside air, the inside weight o' the world That pulled me down. Death meant, to spurn the ground, Soar to the sky, - die well and you do that. The very immolation made the bliss; Death was the heart of life, and all the...
Page 197 - Away from between me and hell ! " she cried : " Hell for me, no embracing any more ! I am God's, I love God, God — whose knees I clasp, Whose utterly most just award I take, But bear no more love-making devils : hence ! " I may have made an effort to reach her side From where I stood i...
Page 171 - As I stretch forth my arm to touch this bar. God and man, and what duty I owe both, — I dare to say I have confronted these In thought: but no such faculty helped here. I put forth no thought, — powerless, all that night I paced the city: it was the first Spring.
Page 171 - Thought?" nay, Sirs, what shall follow was not thought: I have thought sometimes, and thought long and hard. I have stood before, gone round a serious thing, Tasked my whole mind to touch and clasp it close, As I stretch forth my arm to touch this bar.