The Children's Garland: From the Best Poets

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Coventry Patmore
Macmillan, 1862 - 344 pages

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Page 340 - It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make Man better be ; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere : A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night — It was the plant and flower of Light. In small proportions we just beauties see ; And in short measures life may perfect be.
Page 159 - TIGER! Tiger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?
Page 328 - Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen; Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay wither'd and strown.
Page 67 - O sweeter than the marriage-feast, Tis sweeter far to me, To walk together to the kirk With a goodly company!— To walk together to the kirk, And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends, Old men, and babes, and loving friends, And youths and maidens gay!
Page 64 - Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off in hoary flakes. Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden fire.
Page 261 - Her waggon spokes made of long spinners' legs, The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, The traces of the smallest spider's web, The collars of the moonshine's watery beams...
Page 191 - Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and. curious volume of forgotten lore — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. " "Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door — Only this and nothing more.
Page 328 - And there lay the rider distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail, And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, The lances uplifted, the trumpet unblown.
Page 58 - He holds him with his glittering eye — The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years' child: The Mariner hath his will.
Page 194 - Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore: Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore Of 'Never — nevermore.

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