Wednesday, 21 December 2011
John Ferriar: Proudly he shews, with many a smile elate,
The scrambling subjects of the private plate;
While Time their actions and their names bereaves,
They grin forever in the guarded leaves.
Saturday, 3 December 2011
Maurice Maeterlinck: There is a hopefulness in man which renders him unwilling to grant that the cause of his misfortune may be as transparent as that of the wave which dies away in the sand or is hurled on the cliff, of the insect whose little wings gleam for an instant in the light of the sun till the passing bird absorbs its existence.
Owen: In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
Saturday, 5 November 2011
Herbert Spencer: The rudimentary form of all religion is the propitiation of dead ancestors, who are supposed to be still existing, and to be capable of working good or evil to their descendants.
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Edward Dowden: Coleridge broke with tradition in the vulgar sense of the word; he broke with tradition in theology, philosophy, politics; yet he did so in a spirit more truly loyal to the past than was the common orthodoxy in theology or philosophy, or the common Toryism in politics.
Wednesday, 26 October 2011
By James Thomson [B.V.]. I COME FROM mountains under other stars Than those reflected in my waters here; Athwart broad realms, beneath large skies, I flow, Between the Libyan and Arabian hills, And merge at last into the great Mid-Sea; And make this land of Egypt.
Sunday, 18 September 2011
From the review in THE LITERARY GAZETTE. LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 1861. FRAMLEY PARSONAGE1 IT IS A QUESTION whether on the whole we are gainers or losers by the extinction of the romantic element, so rapidly going on in modern English life. When we ridicule every thought or expression savouring of romance, and studiously repress [...]
Sunday, 18 September 2011
By Anthony Trollope. SOON AFTER MY RETURN from the West Indies I was enabled to change my district in Ireland for one in England. For some time past my official work had been of a special nature, taking me out of my own district; but through all that, Dublin had been my home, and there [...]
By Ezra Pound. It is no more ridiculous that a person should receive or convey an emotion by means of an arrangement of shapes, or planes, or colours, than that they should receive or convey such emotion by an arrangement of musical notes. I SUPPOSE THIS PROPOSITION is self-evident. Whistler said as much, some years [...]
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Basil Field: In the happy days of old, when fish were foolish, and fishermen were few, one, two, three, or more flies were fastened at intervals on a line; a cast was made across the stream, the rod-point was depressed, and the flies allowed to sink as they drifted down the current. When the line became fully extended, the flies began to rise to the surface, and to sweep round in a curve towards the bank on which the angler stood, the fly nearest him, called the “bob-fly,” tripping and dancing as it skimmed the water.
By Matthew Arnold [21] See notes at bottom of this page. MANY OBJECTIONS HAVE BEEN made to a proposition which, in some remarks of mine [22] on translating Homer, I ventured to put forth; a proposition about criticism, and its importance at the present day. I said: “Of the literature of France and Germany, as [...]
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Coleridge as a poet.
Edward Dowden: Coleridge broke with tradition in the vulgar sense of the word; he broke with tradition in theology, philosophy, politics; yet he did so in a spirit more truly loyal to the past than was the common orthodoxy in theology or philosophy, or the common Toryism in politics.