English Childhood: Wordsworth's Treatment of Childhood in the Light of English Poetry from Prior to Crabbe, Volume 37

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Columbia University Press, 1922 - 401 pages
 

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Page 395 - I hear! —But there's a Tree, of many one, A single Field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The Pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Page 226 - How skilfully she builds her cell ! How neat she spreads the wax ! And labours hard to store it well With the sweet food she makes. In works of labour, or of skill, I would be busy too ; For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do. In books, or work, or healthful play, Let my first years be past; That I may give for every day Some good account at last.
Page 285 - I'll tell thee: He is called by thy name, For He calls Himself a Lamb. He is meek, and He is mild; He became a little child. I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by His name. Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Page 396 - Thou little child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
Page 335 - I dipped my oars into the silent lake, And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat Went heaving through the water like a swan ; When, from behind that craggy steep till then The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge, As if with voluntary power instinct, Upreared its head.
Page 356 - For feeling has to him imparted power That through the growing faculties of sense Doth like an agent of the one great Mind Create, creator and receiver both, Working but in alliance with the works Which it beholds.
Page 25 - Delightful task! to rear the tender thought, To teach the young idea how to shoot, To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind, To breathe the' enlivening spirit, and to fix The generous purpose in the glowing breast.
Page 290 - Hush Tom, never mind it, for when your head's bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.
Page 318 - Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her ? She sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees ; Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.
Page 8 - Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white, celestial thought ; When yet I had not walk'd above A mile or two from my first Love, And looking back, at that short space Could see a glimpse of his bright face...

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