A Household Book of English Poetry: Selected and Arranged with Notes
General
A Household Book of English Poetry: Selected and Arranged with Notes
American poetry; English poetry
P. 154, No. cxxxii.--This poem, so little known, though the work of one
so well known, opens very solemnly and grandly, but does not maintain
itself altogether at the same height to the end. Even as I have given
it, the two concluding strophes are inferior to the others; and this
declension would be felt by the reader still more strongly, if I had not
at once lightened the poem, and brought it within reasonable compass, by
the omission of no less than six strophes which immediately precede
these. It bears date January 14, 1682/3; and was written at season of
great weakness and intense bodily suffering (see his _Life_ edited by
Sylvester, Part III. p. 192); but the actual life of the great
non-conformist divine was prolonged for some eight or nine years more.
P. 163, No. cxxxviii.--I have gladly found room in this volume, as often
as I fairly could, for poems written by those who, strictly speaking,
were not poets; or who, if poets, have only rarely penned their
inspiration, and, either wanting the accomplishment of verse, or not
caring to use it, have preferred to embody thoughts which might have
claimed a metrical garb in other than metrical forms. Poems from such
authors must always have a special interest for us. To the former of
these classes the author of these manly and high-hearted lines belongs,
and another whose epitaph on his companions left behind in the Arctic
regions is earlier given (see No. cxix.). Bacon (for who can deny to him
a poet’s gifts?) and, before all others as a poet in prose, Jeremy
Taylor, belong to the second. It would be more difficult to affirm of
Bishop Berkeley (see No. cxxxvii.), and of Sir Thomas Browne (see No.
cxxxi.), to which of these classes they ought to be assigned.
P. 166, No. cxxxix.--These lines, in their wit worthy of Lucian, and
with a moral purpose which oftentimes Lucian is wholly without, are
called A Fable, but manifestly have no right to the name. I have omitted
six lines, but with reluctance, being as in fact they are among the most
moral lines in the whole poem.
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