Harvard Memorial Biographies, Volume 1

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Sever and Francis, 1866 - 517 pages

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Page 210 - Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light : The year is dying in the night ; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow The year is going, let him go ; Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Page 327 - Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
Page 327 - Not on the vulgar mass Called " work," must sentence pass, Things done, that took the eye and had the price; O'er which, from level stand, The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice...
Page 20 - Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth For ever, and to noble deeds give birth, Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame, And leave a dead, unprofitable name, Finds comfort in himself and in his cause ; And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause : — This is the happy Warrior ; this is he That every Man in arms should wish to be.
Page xiv - I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate.
Page x - From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest Of those half-virtues which the world calls best, Into War's tumult rude; But rather far that stern device The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood In the dim, unventured wood, The VERITAS* that lurks beneath The letter's unprolific sheath, Life of whate'er makes life worth living, Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.
Page xiv - His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars.
Page xvii - T is no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all...
Page xi - Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. But stay ! no age was e'er degenerate, Unless men held it at too cheap a rate, For in our likeness still we shape our fate. Ah, there is something here Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, Something that gives our feeble light A high immunity from Night, Something that leaps life's narrow bars...
Page 273 - Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.

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