Eng. 262 Exam

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Historical Poem about fire of london?

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Dryden, Annus Mirabilis

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All human things are subject to decay,
And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey.
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long;
In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute
Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute.

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Dyrden, Mac Flecknoe

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Sh—— alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dullness from his tender years.
Sh—— alone, of all my sons, is he
Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity.
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Sh——never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through and make a lucid interval:
But Sh——s genuine night admits no ray,
His rising fogs prevail upon the day.

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Dryden, Mac Flecknoe

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Like mine thy gentle numbers feebly creep,
Thy Tragic Muse gives smiles, thy Comic sleep.
With whate'er gall thou sett'st thy self to write,
Thy inoffensive satires never bite. (197-200)

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Dryden, Mac Flecknow

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Essay tracing satire in Rome

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Dryden, Discourse on Satire

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Diary reflecting an his affairs in 17th century london.

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Pypes, Diary

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Were I (who to my cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man)
A spirit free to choose, for my own share,
What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey or a bear, 5
Or anything but that vain animal
Who is so proud of being rational.

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Rochester, Satire against reason and mankind

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“Blest, glorious man! to whom alone kind heaven 60
An everlasting soul has freely given;
Whom his great Maker took such care to make
That from himself he did the image take
And this fair frame in shining reason dressed
To dignify his nature above beast. 65
Reason, by whose aspiring influence
We take a flight beyond material sense;
Dive into mysteries, then soaring pierce
The flaming limits of the universe;
Search heaven and hell, find out what's acted there,
And give the world true grounds of hope and fear.”

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Rochester, Satire against reason and mankind

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Thus, whilst against false reasoning I inveigh,
I own right reason, which I would obey:
That reason which distinguishes by sense, 100
And gives us rules of good and ill from thence;
That bounds desires with a reforming will
To keep 'em more in vigor, not to kill.
Your reason hinders, mine helps to enjoy,
Renewing appetites yours would destroy.

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Rochester, Satire against reason and mankind

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But a meek, humble man of honest sense,
Who, preaching peace, does practice continence;
Whose pious life's a proof he does believe
Mysterious truths, which no man can conceive;
If upon the earth there dwell such God-like men,
I'll here recant my paradox to them;
Adore those shrines of virtue, homage pay,
And with the rabble world, their laws obey.
If such there be, yet grant me this at least:
Man differs more from man, than man from beast

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Rochester, Satire against reason and mankind

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Poem on man reflecting on his drunken life compared to a navy life.

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Rochester, The disabled debauchee

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Poem reflecting a man unable to perform with his lover

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Rochester, The imperfect enjoyment

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Poem personifying nothing.

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Rochester, Upon Nothing

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Female perspective of the imperfect enjoyment

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Behn, The disappointment

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HARCOURT: No, Mistresses are like Books; if you pore upon them too much, they doze you, and make you unfit for Company; but if us'd discreetly, you are the fitter for conversation by'em.
DORILANT: A Mistress shou'd be like a little Country retreat near the Town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away; to taste the Town the better when a Man returns.
HORNER: I tell you, 'tis as hard to be a good Fellow, a good Friend, and a Lover of Women, as 'tis to be a good Fellow, a good Friend, and a Lover of Money: You cannot follow / both, then choose your side; Wine gives you liberty, Love takes it away.

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William Wycherley, The country wife

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HORNER:Well, Jack, by thy long absence from the Town, the grumness of thy countenance, and the slovenlyness of thy habit; I shou’d give thee joy, should I not, of Marriage?
PINCHWIFE: What then?
HORNER: Why, the next thing that is to be heard is, thou’rt a cuckold.

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William Wycherley, The country wife

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HORNER (to Lady Fidget): …your virtue is your greatest affectation, madam. (23)
HORNER (to Dr Quqck): your women of honor, as you call em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons, and ‘tis scandal they would avoid, not men.

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William Wycherley, The country wife

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MRS SQUEAMISH:
Why, 'tis the Men of qualities fault, they never visit Women of honour, and reputation, as they us'd to do; and have not so much as common civility, for Ladies of our rank, but use us with the same indifferency, and ill breeding, as if we were all marry'd to'em. (38)
LADY FIDGET: Damn'd Rascals, that we shou'd be only wrong'd by'em; to report a Man has had a Person, when he has not had a Person, is the greatest wrong in the whole World, that / can be done to a person. (38)

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William Wycherley, The country wife

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LADY FIDGET:
Who for his business from his wife will run,
Takes the best care to have her business done

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William Wycherley, The country wife

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In Pope, I cannot read a Line,
But with a Sigh, I wish it mine:
When he can in one Couplet fix
More Sense than I can do in Six [50]
It gives me such a jealous Fit,
I cry, Pox take him, and his Wit.

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Swift, Versus on the death of Dr. Swift

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He is acquainted with commerce in all its parts, and will tell you that it is a stupid and barbarous way to extend dominion by arms; for true power is to be got by arts and industry. He will often argue that if this part of our trade were well cultivated, we should gain from one nation; if another, then another. I have heard him prove that diligence makes more lasting acquisitions than valor, and that sloth has ruined more nations than the sword. He abounds in several frugal maxims, among which his greatest favourite is ‘A penny saved is a penny got

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Steele, The spectator

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The various offerings of the world appear;
From each she nicely culls with curious toil,
And decks the Goddess with the glittering spoil.
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
The Tortoise here and Elephant unite,
Transformed to combs, the speckled, and the white

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Pope, Rape of the lock

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Some of her ideas about marriage

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Astell, Some reflections on marriage

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A girl talks about why she doesn't want to get married.

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Defoe, Roxana

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So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed,
(Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do,
Instead of paying chairmen, run them through.)
Laocoon struck the outside with his spear,
And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear.

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Swift, Description of a city shower

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Sweepings from butchers stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,
Dead cats and turnips-tops come tumbling down the flood

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Swift, Description of a city shower

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They would sometimes alight upon my victuals, and leave their loathsome excrement, or spawn behind, which to me was very visible, though not to the natives of that country, whose large optics were not so acute as mine, in viewing smaller objects

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Swift, Gullivers Travels

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In the left pocket, we saw a huge silver chest, with a cover of the same metal, which we the searchers were not able to lift. We desired it should be opened; and one of us, stepping into it, found himself up to the mid leg in a sort of dust, some part whereof flying up to our faces, set us both a sneezing for several times together. In his right waistcoat-pocket, we found a prodigious bundle of white thin substances, folded one over another, about the bigness of three men, tied with a strong cable, and marked with black figures; … in the left there was a sort of engine, from the back of which were extended twenty long poles….”

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Swift, Gullivers Travels

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I am wonderfully delighted to see such a body of men thriving in their own private fortunes and at the same time promoting the public stock.

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Addison and Steele, Spectator

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Trade, without enlarging the British territories, has given us a kind of additional empire.

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Addison and Steele, Spectator

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First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just Standard, which is still the same:
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged and universal Light,
Life, Force, and Beauty, must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
…
Those rules of old discovered, not devised,
Are Nature still, but Nature methodized;
Nature, like Liberty, is but restrained
By the same Laws which first herself ordained.

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An essay on criticism

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Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in Judging ill,
But, of the two, less dangerous is the offence,
To tire our patience, than mis-lead our sense:
Some few in that, but numbers err in this,
Ten censure wrong for one who Writes amiss;
A fool might once himself alone expose,
Now one in verse makes many more in prose.

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An essay on criticism

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True wit is Nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.

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An essay on criticism

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This Nymph, to the Destruction of Mankind,
Nourish'd two Locks which graceful hung behind
In equal Curls, and well conspired to deck
With shining Ringlets the smooth ivory Neck.

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Pope, rape of the lock

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But since, alas! frail Beauty must decay,
Curl'd or uncurl'd, since Locks will turn to grey;
Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,
And she who scorns a Man, must die a Maid,
What then remains but well our Pow'r to use,
And keep good Humour still whate'er we lose?

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Pope, Rape of the lock

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This record, though by no means so perfect as I could wish, will serve to give a notion of a very curious interview, which was not only pleasing at the time, but had the agreeable and benignant effect of reconciling any animosity and sweetening any acidity, which in the various bustle of political contest, had been produced in the minds of two men, who, though widely different, had so many things in common—classical learning, modern literature, wit, and humour, and ready repartee—that it would have been much to be regretted if they had been forever at a distance from each other.

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Boswell, Life of Johnson

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Satire on the ugliness of a women's dressing room

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Swift, The lady's dressing room

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Response to the lady's dressing room

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Montagu, Reason's that induced Dr. Swift to write a poem called... "

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A satire that also sympathizes with women

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Pope, Epistle 2. To a lady

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Response to 'to a lady'

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Ingram, An epistle to mr. Pope

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About women

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Leapor, an essay on woman

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Let Observation with extensive View,
Survey Mankind, from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious Toil, each eager Strife,
And watch the busy Scenes of crouded Life;
Then say how Hope and Fear, Desire and Hate,
O'er spread with Snares the clouded Maze of Fate,
Where wav'ring Man, betray'd by vent'rous Pride,
To tread the dreary Paths without a Guide;
As treach'rous Phantoms in the Mist delude,
Shuns fancied Ills, or chases airy Good.
How rarely Reason guides the stubborn Choice,
Rules the bold Hand, or prompts the suppliant Voice;
How Nations sink, by darling Schemes oppres'd,
When Vengeance listens to the Fool's Request.

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Johnson, Vanity of human wishes

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Love ends with Hope, the sinking Statesman's Door
Pours in the Morning Worshiper no more;
For growing Names the weekly Scribbler lies,
To growing Wealth the Dedicator flies,
From every Room descends the painted Face,
That hung the bright Palladium of the Place,
And smoak'd in Kitchens, or in Auctions sold,
To better Features yields the Frame of Gold;

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Johnson, Vanity of human wishes

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“I was really distressed myself to see his distress.”(2995)
“yet I could almost have jumped for joy when he was gone, to think that the affair was thus finally over.”(2996)
“Thus relieved, restored to future hopes, I went to bed as light, happy and thankful as if escaped from destruction.”(2997)

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Burney, The journal and letters

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Deign on the passing World to turn thine Eyes,
And pause awhile from Learning to be wise;
There mark what Ills the Scholar's Life assail,
Toil, Envy, Want, the Patron, and the Jail.

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Johnson, Vanity of human wishes

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Still raise for Good the supplicating Voice,
But leave to Heav'n the Measure and the Choice.
Safe in his Pow'r, whose Eyes discern afar
The secret Ambush of a specious Pray'r.
Implore his Aid, in his Decisions rest,
Secure whate'er he gives, he gives the best.

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Johnson, Vanity of human wishes

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when the sense of sacred presence fires,
And strong devotion to the skies aspires,
Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind,
Obedient passions, and a will resigned;

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Johnson, Vanity of human wishes

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The various offerings of the world appear;
From each she nicely culls with curious toil,
And decks the Goddess with the glittering spoil.
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
The Tortoise here and Elephant unite,
Transformed to combs, the speckled, and the white

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Pope, Rape of the lock

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A long poem about the seasons

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Thomson, Seasons

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How often have I loitered o'er your green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene;
How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill,
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made; …These were thy charms, sweet village; sports like these,
With sweet succession, taught even toil to please;
These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed,
These were thy charms -But all these charms are fled.

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Goldsmith,The deserted village

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These simple blessings of the lowly train;
To me more dear, congenial to my heart,
One native charm, than all the gloss of art.

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Goldsmith, The deserted Village

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Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied

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Goldsmith, The deserted village

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Trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the laboured mole away;
While self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky.

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Goldsmith, The deserted village

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Poem lamenting wisom/knowledge.

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Gray, Ode on a distant prospect of eton college

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Not undelightful is an hour to me
So spent in parlour twilight; such a gloom
Suits well the thoughtful or unthinking mind,
The mind contemplative, with some new theme
Pregnant, or indisposed alike to all.
Laugh ye, who boast your more mercurial powers
That never feel a stupor, know no pause,
Nor need one. I am conscious and confess,
Fearless, a soul that does not always think.
Me oft has fancy ludicrous and wild
Soothed with a waking dream of houses, towers,
Trees, churches, and strange visages expressed
In the red cinders, while with poring eye
I gazed, myself creating what I saw.

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Cowper, The task

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I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

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Woodsworth, I wandered lonely as a cloud

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"Why William, on that old grey stone,
"Thus for the length of half a day,
"Why William, sit you thus alone,
"And dream your time away?
"Where are your books? that light bequeath'd
"To beings else forlorn and blind!
"Up! Up! and drink the spirit breath'd
"From dead men to their kind.
"You look round on your mother earth,
"As if she for no purpose bore you;
"As if you were her first-born birth,
"And none had lived before you!"
One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,
When life was sweet I knew not why,
To me my good friend Matthew spake,
And thus I made reply.







"The eye it cannot chuse but see,
"We cannot bid the ear be still;
"Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
"Against, or with our will.
"Nor less I deem that there are powers,
"Which of themselves our minds impress,
"That we can feed this mind of ours,
"In a wise passiveness.
"Think you, mid all this mighty sum
"Of things for ever speaking,
"That nothing of itself will come,
"But we must still be seeking?
"

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Woodsworth, Expostulation and reply

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Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks,
Why all this toil and trouble?
Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you'll grow double.
The sun above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow,
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.
Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife,
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music; on my life
There's more of wisdom in it.
And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
And he is no mean preacher;
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.
She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless--
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by chearfulness.
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man;
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
Sweet is the lore which nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things;
--We murder to dissect.
Enough of science and of art;
Close up these barre

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Woodsworth, the tables turned

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The first volume of these poems has already been submitted to general perusal. It was published as an experiment which, I hoped, might be of some use to ascertain how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted, which a poet may rationally endeavor to impart

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Wordsworth, Preface To Lyrical Ballads

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They who have been accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will, no doubt, frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and aukwardness: they will look round for poetry, and will be induced to inquire by what species of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to assume that title. I hope therefore the Reader will not censure me, if I attempt to state what I have proposed to myself to perform

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Wordsworth, Preface To Lyrical Ballads

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I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion similar to that which was before the subject of contemplation is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind

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Wordsworth, Preface To Lyrical Ballads

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He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them. To these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if they were present; an ability of conjuring up in himself passions, which are indeed far from being the same as those produced by real events, yet (especially in those parts of the general sympathy which are pleasing and delightful) do more nearly resemble the passions produced by real events, than any thing which, from the motions of their own minds merely

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Wordsworth, Preface To Lyrical Ballads

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It has therefore appeared to me, that to endeavour to produce or enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which, at any period, a Writer can be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. to this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves. The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are

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Wordsworth, Preface To Lyrical Ballads

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Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:    What if my leaves are falling like its own?The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,    My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,    Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;And, by the incantation of this verse,

    Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearthAshes and sparks, my words among mankind!    Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

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Shelley, Ode To The West Wind

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An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,—
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring,—
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,—
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,—
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,—
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A Senate, Time's worst statute unrepealed,—
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

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Shelley, England in 1819

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I.
THE AWFUL shadow of some unseen Power
  Floats though unseen amongst us,—visiting
  This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,—
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
    It visits with inconstant glance
    Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,—
    Like clouds in starlight widely spread,—
    Like memory of music fled,—
    Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

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Shelley, Hymn To Intellectual Beauty

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2.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on:
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never, canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love and she be fair!

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Keats, Ode To A Grecian Urn

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Oh Plato! Plato! you have paved the way,    With your confounded fantasies, to moreImmoral conduct by the fancied sway    Your system feigns o'er the controulless coreOf human hearts, than all the long array    Of poets and romancers: --- You 're a bore,A charlatan, a coxcomb --- and have been,At best, no better than a go-between.

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Byron, Duon Juan

Front 69

90
Young Juan wandered by the glassy brooks,
Thinking unutterable things; he threw
Himself at length within the leafy nooks
Where the wild branch of the cork forest grew;
There poets find materials for their books,
And every now and then we read them through,
So that their plan and prosody are eligible,
Unless, like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible.
91
He, Juan (and not Wordsworth), so pursued
His self-communion with his own high soul,
Until his mighty heart, in its great mood,
Had mitigated part, though not the whole
Of its disease; he did the best he could
With things not very subject to control,
And turned, without perceiving his condition,
Like Coleridge, into a metaphysician.

92
He thought about himself, and the whole earth
Of man the wonderful, and of the stars,
And how the deuce they ever could have birth;
And then he thought of earthquakes, and of wars,
How many miles the moon might have in girth,
Of air-balloons, and of the many bars
To perfect knowledge of the boundles

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Byron, Duon Juan

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“heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.”

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Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

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“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees—my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath—a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff—he’s always in my mind—not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself—but, as my own being…

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Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

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I'd as soon put that little canary into the park on a winter's day, as recommend you to bestow your heart on him! It is deplorable ignorance of his character, child, and nothing else, which makes that dream enter your head. Pray, don't imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior! He's not a rough diamond - a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man. I never say to him, "Let this or that enemy alone, because it would be ungenerous or cruel to harm them;" I say, "Let them alone, because I should hate them to be wronged:" and he'd crush you like a sparrow's egg, Isabella, if he found you a troublesome charge.

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Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

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You teach me how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why do you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry, and wring out my kisses and tears; they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me--then what right had you to leave me? What right--answer me--for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart--you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.

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Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

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Every truth which a human being can enunciate, every thought, even every outward impression, which can enter into his consciousness, may become poetry, when shown through any impassioned medium; when invested with the coloring of joy, or grief, or pity, or affection, or admiration, or reverence, or awe, or even hatred or terror; and, unless so colored, nothing, be it as interesting as it may, is poetry.

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Mill, What Is Poetry

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Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character: and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without.

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Mills, What Is Poetry

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“What made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared by all human beings;”

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Mills, Autobiography

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My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains    
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains    
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,    
But being too happy in thine happiness, -        
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,            
In some melodious plot    
Of beechen green and shadows numberless,        
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

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Keats, Ode To A Nightingale

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“Now,” I said, “may GodBe witness 'twixt us two!' and with the word,Meseemed I floated into a sudden lightAbove his stature,--“am I proved too weakTo stand alone, yet strong enough to bearSuch leaners on my shoulder? poor to think,Yet rich enough to sympathise with thought?Incompetent to sing, as blackbirds can,Yet competent to love, like HIM?”

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E. B. Browning, Aurora Leigh

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All actual heroes are essential men,
All men are possible heroes: every age,Heroic in proportions, double-faced, Looks backward and before, expects a mornAnd claims an epos. Ay, but every ageAppears to souls who live in it, (ask Carlyle)Most unheroic. Ours, for instance, ours!The thinkers scout it, and the poets abound Who scorn to touch it with a finger-tip:A pewter age,-mixed metal, silver-washed; An age of scum, spooned off the richer past; An age of patches for old gabardines;An age of mere transition, meaning nought, Except that what succeeds must shame it quite,If God please. That's wrong thinking, to my mind, And wrong thoughts make poor poems.

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E. B. Browning, Aurora Leigh

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She hadA heart how shall I say? too soon made glad,Too easily impressed; she liked whate'erShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere.Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,The dropping of the daylight in the West,The bough of cherries some officious foolBroke in the orchard for her, the white muleShe rode with round the terrace all and eachWould draw from her alike the approving speech,Or blush, at least. She thanked men good! but thankedSomehow I know not how as if she rankedMy gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith anybody's gift.

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Robert Browning, My Last Duchess

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There she standsAs if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meetThe company below, then. I repeat,The Count your master's known munificenceIs ample warrant that no just pretenseOf mine for dowry will be disallowed;Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowedAt starting, is my object. Nay we'll goTogether down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

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Robert Browning, My Last Duchess

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The cloud’s not danced out of my brain—
The cloud that made it turn and swim
While hour by hour the books grew dim.
Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—
For all your wealth of loosened hair,
Your silk ungirdled and unlac’d
And warm sweets open to the waist.
All golden in the lamplight’s gleam,—
You know not what a book you seem,
Half-read by lightning in a dream!

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Rossetti, Jenny

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Yet, Jenny, looking long at you
The woman almost fades from view.
A cipher of man’s changeless sum
Of lust, past, present, and to come,
Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
To challenge from the scornful sphinx.

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Rossetti, Jenny

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Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

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Arnold, Dover Beach

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Wandering between two worlds, one dead
The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere yet to rest my head.

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Arnold, Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse

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“a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.”

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Arnold, The Function Of Criticism At The Present Time

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“More and more, because of this our blind faith in machinery, because of our want of light to enable us to look beyond machinery to the end for which machinery is valuable, this and that man, and this and that body of men, all over the country, are beginning to assert and put in practice an Englishman’s right to do what he likes; his right to march where he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he likes, hoot as he likes, threaten as he likes, smash as he likes. All this, I say, tends to anarchy …”

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Arnold, Culture and Anarchy