Letters of Anna Seward: Written Between the Years 1784 and 1807 : in Six Volumes, Volume 5

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George Ramsay, 1811 - Authors, English - 2514 pages
 

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Page 377 - O ! who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite By bare imagination of a feast? Or wallow naked in December snow By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
Page 171 - For neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone, By his permissive will, through heaven and earth : And oft, though Wisdom wake, Suspicion sleeps At Wisdom's gate, and to Simplicity Resigns her charge, while Goodness thinks no ill Where no ill seems...
Page 396 - Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings, And seems to creep, decrepit with his age ; Behold him, when past by ; what then is seen, But his broad pinions swifter than the winds ? And all mankind, in contradiction strong, Rueful, aghast ! cry out on his career.
Page 330 - Raasay has little that can detain a traveller, except the laird and his family; but their power wants no auxiliaries. Such a seat of hospitality, amidst the winds and waters, fills the imagination with a delightful contrariety of images. Without is the rough ocean and the rocky land, the beating billows and the howling storm : within is plenty and elegance, beauty and gaiety, the song and the dance.
Page 99 - Drive through the mingling skies with vapour foul; Dash on the mountain's brow, and shake the woods, That grumbling wave below. The unsightly plain Lies a brown deluge; as the low-bent clouds Pour flood on flood, yet unexhausted still Combine, and deepening into night shut up The day's fair face.
Page 86 - Kilda's * shore, whose lonely race Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds, The royal eagle draws his vigorous young, Strong-pounced, and ardent with paternal fire. Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own, He drives them from his fort, the towering seat, For ages, of his empire; which, in peace, Unstain'd he holds, while many a league to sea He wings his course, and preys in distant isles.
Page 97 - Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat, To peep at such a world; to see the stir Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd; To hear the roar she sends through all her gates At a safe distance, where the dying sound Falls a soft murmur on the
Page 86 - High from the summit of a craggy cliff, Hung o'er the deep, such as amazing frowns On utmost Kilda's * shore, whose lonely race Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds, The royal eagle draws his vigorous young, Strong-pounc'd, and ardent with paternal fire.
Page 120 - ... advantage of describing the Morning in so lively a manner as he does everywhere in his Works: The springing Sun glows warm in his lines, and the fragrant Air blows cool in his descriptions; we smell the sweets of the bloomy Haws , and hear the Musick of the feathered Choir, when ever we take a Forrest walk with him.
Page 388 - With mazy error under pendent shades Ran Nectar, visiting each plant, and fed Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art In beds and curious knots, but nature boon Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain, Both where the morning sun first warmly smote The open field, and where the unpierced shade Imbrown'd the noontide bowers. Thus was this place A happy rural seat of various view...

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