Criticism; English essays; English poetry -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Poetry
pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the loathsome
finery of the profession of blood.
Such were the notes our once-lov’d poet sung.
And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard
the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together,
Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of
Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well
satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the
sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the _good cause_;
and the cold dank drops of dew that hung half-melted on the beard of
the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in them; for there
was a spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that turned everything
into good The face of nature had not then the brand of JUS DIVINUM on
it:
Like to that sanguine flower inscrib’d with woe.
On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I was called
down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping, half-afraid. He
received me very graciously, and I listened for a long time without
uttering a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. ‘For
those two hours,’ he afterwards was pleased to say, ‘he was conversing
with W. H.’s forehead!’ His appearance was different from what I had
anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in the dim
light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his aspect,
a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the small-pox. His
complexion was at that time clear, and even bright--
As are the children of yon azure sheen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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