Werner's Readings and Recitations: American classics (c1913)

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E.S. Werner, 1891

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Page 170 - Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Page 89 - Written on thy works, I read The lesson of thy own eternity. Lo ! all grow old and die — but see, again, How on the faltering footsteps of Decay Youth presses — ever gay and beautiful Youth, In all its beautiful forms.
Page 88 - E'er wore his crown as loftily as he Wears the green coronal of leaves with which Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower, With scented breath and look so like a smile...
Page 83 - Blushes with love, While, to listen, the red levin (With the rapid Pleiads, even, Which were seven) Pauses in Heaven. And they say (the starry choir And the other listening things) That Israfeli's fire Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings — The trembling living wire Of those unusual strings.
Page 87 - THE groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them — ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems ; in the darkling wood, Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication.
Page 12 - And from her eyes and cheeks the light and bloom of the morning. Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish, That the dying heard it, and started up from their pillows.
Page 170 - Parian wreaths; A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn ; Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate A tapering turret overtops the work. And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not. Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow.
Page 90 - God ! when thou Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill With all the waters of the firmament The swift dark whirlwind that uproots...
Page 83 - Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely — flowers, And the shadow of thy perfect bliss Is the sunshine of ours.
Page 88 - But thou art here — thou fill'st The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds That run along the summit of these trees In music; thou art in the cooler breath That from the inmost darkness .of the place Comes, scarcely felt ; the barky trunks, the ground, The fresh, moist ground, are all instinct with thee.

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