The gay science, Volume 1

Front Cover

From inside the book

Contents

I
5
III
11
V
49
VII
77
IX
99
XI
181
XIII
201
XV
259
XVII
313

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Page 284 - There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate. She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate; The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near;' And the white rose weeps, 'She is late;' The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear;' And the lily whispers, 'I wait.
Page 194 - The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.
Page 188 - Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar; it reproduces all that it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it coexists.
Page 324 - But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence...
Page 326 - Swift as a shadow, short as any dream ; Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth. And ere a man hath power to say, — Behold ! The jaws of darkness do devour it up : So quick bright things come to confusion.
Page 322 - For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and...
Page 328 - It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the electric life which burns within their words. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the 233 spirit of the age.
Page 287 - If music be the food of love, play on ; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again ! it had a dying fall : O ! it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour.
Page 251 - Dear Child ! dear Girl ! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine. Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year ; And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not.
Page 290 - twere a little sky Gulfed in a world below; A firmament of purple light Which in the dark earth lay, More boundless than the depth of night, And purer than the day — In which the lovely forests grew, As in the upper air, More perfect both in shape and hue Than any spreading there.

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