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54. Greece, as it impressed the mind of the Poet in 1810.

SOLEMNITY OF EXPRESSION:

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'Plaintive manner, Admiration and Regret, Dread and

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Pity,

• Horror, "Eager Hope, relaxes into Calm Regret; Narrative manner, assumes an expression of Dread, which relaxes into 10 Pity, with the addition of much "Solemnity as the description draws to a conclusion,

1 He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,
(The first dark day of nothingness,

The last of danger and distress,)
2 Before decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,
And marked the mild angelic air,

The rapture of repose that's there,
The fixed, yet tender traits, that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
And- but for that sad shrouded eye

+ That fires not, wins not, weeps not now,
And- but for that chill, changeless brow
Where cold obstruction's apathy

Appals the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart

The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon-
"Yes-but for these, and these alone-

Some moments-aye-one treacherous hour, "We still might doubt the tyrant's power;

So fair, so calm, so softly sealed,

The first, last look by death revealed.

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Such is the aspect of that shore:

'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more;

So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,

We start ;-for soul is wanting there.

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10 Hers is the loveliness in death

Which parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty of that fearful bloom,

That hue which "haunts it to the tomb;
Expression's last receding ray,

A gilded halo hovering round decay,
The farewell beam of feeling past away:

Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth, Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished

earth.

LORD BYRON.

55. Influence of Natural Objects in calling forth the Imagination.

MEDITATIVE MANNER:

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'Delight mingled with Awe, Scorn, Delight and Awe, Narrative manner, assuming Solemnity of expression, which relaxes toward the Plaintive manner, Delight.

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Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe!

Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought,
And givest to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn

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Of childhood, didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul;
2 Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature; purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear,-until we recognise
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

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*Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November days
When 5 vapours, rolling down the valleys, made
A lonely scene more lonesome;-among woods
At noon;—and mid the calm of summer nights,
When by the margin of the trembling lake
Beneath the gloomy hills, I homeward went
In solitude; such intercourse was mine;
'Twas mine among the fields both day and night,
And by the waters all the summer long.

WORDSWORTH.

56. Pleasures of Hope.

MEDITATIVE MANNER:

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1 Delight, ⚫Narrative manner; rises again into Delight; Argumentative manner; relaxes into Pity, Delight, Awe mingling with, and qualifying the expression of Delight, with an occasional expression of "Triumph.

At summer's eve, when Heaven's aërial bow Spans, with bright arch, the glittering hills be

low,

Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sun-bright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do those hills of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?
2 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain with its azure hue.
Thus, with delight, we linger to survey
"The promised joys of life's unmeasured way;
Thus, from afar, each dim-discovered scene
More pleasing seems than all the past hath been;
And every form that fancy can repair

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From dark oblivion, glows divinely there.

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* What potent spirit guides the raptured eye To pierce the shades of dim futurity?

Can Wisdom lend, with all her boasted power,

The pledge of joy's anticipated hour;

Ah no! she darkly sees the fate of man,
Her dim horizon bounded to a span;
Or if she holds an image to the view,
'Tis nature pictured too severely true.

"With thee, sweet Hope, resides the heavenly light,

That pours remotest rapture on the sight:
Thine is the charm of life's bewildered way,
That calls each slumbering passion into play.

'Eternal Hope! when yonder spheres sublime Pealed their first notes to sound the march of time,

8 Thy joyous youth began-but not to fade. When all the sister planets have decayed;

When wrapt in fire the realms of ether glow, And Heaven's last thunder shakes the world

below;

"Thou, undismayed, shalt o'er the ruins smile, And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile.

CAMPBELL.

57. Pleasures of Memory.

MEDITATIVE Manner:

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'Delight mingled with Regret, Delight predominates, Exultation, An expression of Force and Determination, with occasional Solemnity; returns to the expression of Force, Determination, and Triumph; Calm Delight.

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1Sweetmemory! wafted by thy gentle gale,
Oft up the stream of time I turn my sail
To view the fairy haunts of 2 long lost hours,

Blessed with far greener shades, far fresher bowers.

When joy's bright sun has shed his evening

ray,

And hope's delusive meteors cease to play, When clouds on clouds the smiling prospect

close,

Still through the gloom thy star serenely glows; Like yon fair orb she gilds the brow of night With the mild magic of reflected light.

* And who can tell the triumphs of the mind By truth illumined and by taste refined?

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