Sonnets, by Feltham Burghley

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Page xxvi - The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity.
Page xxxvi - Tired with all these for restful death I cry, As to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimmed in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, And strength by limping sway disabled And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill, And simple truth miscalled simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill.
Page xxxvii - Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self that seals up all in rest. In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie...
Page xxiv - A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth...
Page i - I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden.
Page xxxv - Guard them, and him within protect from harms. He can requite thee; for he knows the charms That call fame on such gentle acts as these, And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas, Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms. Lift not thy spear against the Muses
Page xxvii - ... a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order; judgment ever awake, and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature, the manner to the matter, and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry. "Doubtless...
Page xxi - The Poet writes under one restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a human Being possessed of that information which may be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a Man.
Page xxxviii - Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow, They rightly do inherit heaven's graces And husband nature's riches from expense ; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die, But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity : For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds ; Lilies that fester smell far...
Page xxxiv - Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven ; All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.

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