ENGL passage identification Flashcards by S B

Of the literature of France and Germany, as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, for now many years, has been a critical effort; the endeavour, in all branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as in itself it really is…. (N 450)

Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

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[Criticism’s] business is, as I have said, simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas. (N 458)

Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

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The critical power is of lower rank than the creative. True; but in assenting to this proposition, one or two things are to be kept in mind. It is undeniable that the exercise of a creative power, that a free creative activity, is the true function of man; it is proved to be so by man’s finding in it his true happiness. But it is undeniable, also, that men may have the sense of exercising this free creative activity in other ways than in producing great works of literature or art; if it were not so, all but a very few men would be shut out from the true happiness of all men; they may have it in well−doing, they may have it in learning, they may have it even in criticising. This is one thing to be kept in mind.
Another is, that the exercise of the creative power in the production of great works of literature or art, however high this exercise of it may rank, is not at all epochs and under all conditions possible; and that therefore labour may be vainly spent in attempting it, which might with more fruit be used in preparing for it, in rendering it possible. This creative power works with elements, with materials; what if it has not those materials, those elements, ready for its use? (N 451-452)

Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

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This is why great creative epochs in literature are so rare; this is why there is so much that is unsatisfactory in the productions of many men of real genius; because for the creation of a master-work of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment; the creative power has, for its happy exercise, appointed elements, and those elements are not in its own control. Nay, they are more within the control of the critical power. (N 452)

Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

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[E]very one can see that a poet, for instance, ought to know life and the world before dealing with them in poetry; and life and the world being in modern times very complex things, the creation of a modern poet, to be worth much, implies a great critical effort behind it; else it must be a comparatively poor, barren, and short-lived affair. This is why Byron’s poetry had so little endurance in it, and Goethe’s so much; both Byron and Goethe had a great productive power, but Goethe’s was nourished by a great critical effort providing the true materials for it, and Byron’s was not. . . .
It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative activity in our literature, through the first quarter of this century, had about it in fact something premature; and that from this cause its productions are doomed, most of them, in spite of the sanguine hopes which accompanied and do still accompany them, to prove hardly more lasting than the productions of far less splendid epochs. And this prematureness comes from its having proceeded without having its proper data, without sufficient materials to work with. . . . (N 452)

Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

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In other words, the English poetry of the first quarter of this century, with plenty of energy, plenty of creative force, did not know enough. This makes Byron so empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent, Wordsworth even, profound as he is, yet so wanting in completeness and variety. . . I admire Wordsworth, as he is, so much that I cannot wish him different. . . But surely the one thing wanting to make Wordsworth an even greater poet than he is,—his thought richer, and his influence of wider application,—was that he should have read more books. . . . (N 452)

Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

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It is of the last importance that English criticism should clearly discern what rule for its course, in order to avail itself of the field now opening to it, and to produce fruit for the future, it ought to take. The rule may be summed up in one word,—disinterestedness. And how is criticism to show disinterestedness? By keeping aloof from what is called “the practical view of things”; by resolutely following the law of its own nature, which is to be a free play of the mind on all subjects which it touches. By steadily refusing to lend itself to any of those ulterior, political, practical considerations about ideas, which plenty of people will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought often to be attached to them, which in this country at any rate are certain to be attached to them quite sufficiently, but which criticism has really nothing to do with. Its business is, as I have said, simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas.
(N 458)

Matthew Arnold, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

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The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

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Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

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The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

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One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel — every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more or less. He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him, Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright; Not as she is, but as she fills his dream. (N 539)

Christina Rossetti, In an Artist’s Studio

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Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry: “Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries, Melons and raspberries, Bloom-down-cheeked peaches, Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries, Crab-apples, dewberries, Pine-apples, blackberries, Apricots, strawberries;—
All ripe together
In summer weather,—
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;

Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market

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Come buy, come buy:
Our grapes fresh from the vine, Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages, Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries, Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye; Come buy, come buy.” (1-31, N 542)

Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market

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Lizzie cover’d up her eyes,
Cover’d close lest they should look; Laura rear’d her glossy head,
And whisper’d like the restless brook: “Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,
Down the glen tramp little men.
One hauls a basket,
One bears a plate,
One lugs a golden dish
Of many pounds weight.
How fair the vine must grow
Whose grapes are so luscious;
How warm the wind must blow Through those fruit bushes.”
“No,” said Lizzie, “No, no, no;
Their offers should not charm us, Their evil gifts would harm us.”
She thrust a dimpled finger
In each ear, shut eyes and ran:
Curious Laura chose to linger Wondering at each merchant man. One had a cat’s face,
One whisk’d a tail,
One tramp’d at a rat’s pace,
One crawl’d like a snail,
One like a wombat prowl’d obtuse and furry, One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.
She heard a voice like voice of doves Cooing all together:
They sounded kind and full of loves
In the pleasant weather.
Laura stretch’d her gleaming neck Like a rush-imbedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck,
Like a moonlit poplar branch, Like a vessel at the launch
When its last restraint is gone. (N 543, 50-86)

Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market

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White and golden Lizzie stood, Like a lily in a flood,—
Like a rock of blue-vein’d stone Lash’d by tides obstreperously,— Like a beacon left alone
In a hoary roaring sea,
Sending up a golden fire,—
Like a fruit-crown’d orange-tree White with blossoms honey-sweet Sore beset by wasp and bee,— Like a royal virgin town
Topp’d with gilded dome and spire Close beleaguer’d by a fleet
Mad to tug her standard down.
(N 551, 408-421)

Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market

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True genius, but true woman! dost deny Thy woman’s nature with a manly scorn And break away the gauds and armlets worn By weaker women in captivity?
Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry
Is sobbed in by a woman’s voice forlorn,—
Thy woman’s hair, my sister, all unshorn
Floats back dishevelled strength in agony
Disproving thy man’s name: and while before
The world thou burnest in a poet-fire,
We see thy woman-heart beat evermore
Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher, Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore,
Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, To George Sand: A Recognition

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I learnt much music,—such as would have been As quite impossible in Johnson’s day
As still it might be wished—fine sleights of hand And unimagined fingering, shuffling off
The hearer’s soul through hurricanes of notes
To a noisy Tophet; and I drew … costumes
From French engravings, nereids neatly draped,
(With smirks of simmering godship):—I washed in From nature, landscapes, (rather say, washed out).
I danced the polka and Cellarius,
Spun glass, stuffed birds, and modelled flowers in wax, Because she liked accomplishments in girls.
(N 128)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

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What you love, Is not a woman, Romney, but a cause:
You want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir,
A wife to help your ends,—in her no end! Your cause is noble, your ends excellent,
But I, being most unworthy of these and that, Do otherwise conceive of love. Farewell.’
‘Farewell, Aurora? you reject me thus?’ He said.
‘Why, sir, you are married long ago. You have a wife already whom you love, Your social theory. Bless you both, I say. For my part, I am scarcely meek enough To be the handmaid of a lawful spouse. (N 134)
With quiet indignation I broke in.
“You misconceive the question like a man,
Who sees a woman as the complement
Of his sex merely. You forget too much
That every creature, female as the male,
Stands single in responsible act and thought
As also in birth and death. Whoever says
To a loyal woman, ‘Love and work with me,’
Will get fair answers, if the work and love
Being good themselves, are good for her—the best She was born for. Women of a softer mood, Surprised by men when scarcely awake to life,
Will sometimes only hear the first word, love,
And catch up with it any kind of work,
Indifferent, so that dear love go with it.
. . . But me your work
Is not the best for,—nor your love the best,
Nor able to commend the kind of work
For love’s sake merely. Ah, you force me, sir,
To be over-bold in speaking of myself:
I, too, have my vocation,—work to do…” (N 135)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

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“We are foolish … in speaking of the ‘superiority’ of one sex to the other…. Each has what the other has not: each completes the other, and is completed by the other; they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and perfection of both depends on each asking and receiving from the other what the other only can give” (101).

John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens

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“We hear of the ‘mission’ and of the ‘rights’ of Woman, as
if these could ever be separate from the mission and the rights
of Man—as if she and her lord were creatures of independent
kind and irreconcilable claim. This, at least, is wrong. And not
less wrong—perhaps even more foolishly wrong … is the idea that Woman is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported
altogether in her weakness by the preeminence of his fortitude.
This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting her who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave!” (85-86)

John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens

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But the woman’s power is for rule, not for battle,—and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places. Her great function is Praise: she enters into no contest, but infallibly judges the crown of contest. By her office, and place, she is protected from all danger and temptation. (101-2)

John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens

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In all Christian ages which have been remarkable for their purity or progress, there has been absolute yielding of obedient devotion, by the lover, to his mistress. I say obedient;—not merely enthusiastic and worshipping in imagination, but entirely subject, receiving from the beloved woman, however young, not only the encouragement, the praise, and the reward of all toil, but, so far as any choice is open, or any question difficult of decision, the direction of all toil. That chivalry, to the abuse and dishonour of which are attributable primarily whatever is cruel in war, unjust in peace, or corrupt and ignoble in domestic relations; and to the original purity and power of which we owe the defence alike of faith, of law, and of love; that chivalry, I say, in its very first conception of honourable life, assumes the subjection of the young knight to the command—should it even be the command in caprice—of his lady. It assumes this, because its masters knew that the first and necessary impulse of every truly taught and knightly heart is this of blind service to its lady: that where that true faith and captivity are not, all wayward and wicked passion must be; and that in this rapturous obedience to the single love of his youth, is the sanctification of all man’s strength, and the continuance of all his purposes. (98-99)

John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens (note use of ‘chivalry’)

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Now their separate characters are briefly these. The man’s power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But the woman’s power is for rule, not for battle,—and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places. Her great function is Praise: she enters into no contest, but infallibly judges the crown of contest. By her office, and place, she is protected from all danger and temptation. The man, in his rough work in open world [sic], must encounter all peril and trial;—to him, therefore, must be the failure, the offence, the inevitable error: often he must be wounded or subdued; often misled; and always hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offence. This is the true nature of home—it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division…. And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her…. This, then, I believe to be,—will you not admit it to be?—the woman’s true place and power. (101-2)

John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens (note use of ‘true’)

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What the man is at his own gate, defending it, if need be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but in a more devoted measure, he is to be at the gate of his country, leaving his home, if need be, even to the spoiler, to do his more incumbent work there.
And, in like manner, what the woman is to be within her gates, as the centre of order, the balm of distress,
and the mirror of beauty: that she is also to be without her gates, where order is more difficult, distress more imminent, loveliness more rare. . . .
Will you not covet such power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be no more housewives, but queens? (123-124)

John Ruskin, Of Queen’s Gardens

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“[T]he woman, we say, is not to guide, nor even to think for herself. The man is always to be the wiser; he is to be the thinker, the ruler, the superior in knowledge and discretion, as in power. Is it not somewhat important to make up our minds on this matter?” (97).

John Ruskin, Of Queen's Gardens

“We hear of the ‘mission’ and of the ‘rights’ of Woman, as if these could ever be separate from the mission and the rights of Man—as if she and her lord were creatures of independent kind and irreconcilable claim. This, at least, is wrong. And not less wrong—perhaps even more foolishly wrong ... is the idea that Woman is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported altogether in her weakness by the preeminence of his fortitude. This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting her who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave!” (85-86)

John Ruskin, Of Queen's Gardens

She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infallibly wise—wise, not for self-development, but for self- renunciation; wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but that she may never fail from his side... I have been trying, thus far, to show you what should be the place and what the power of woman. Now, secondly we ask, What kind of education is to fit her for these? (104)

John Ruskin, Of Queen's Gardens

All such knowledge should be given her as may enable her to understand, and even to aid, the work of men: and yet it should be given, not as knowledge,—not as if it were, or could be, for her an object to know; but only to feel and to judge. (107)

John Ruskin, Of Queen's Gardens (education)

I believe, then, with this exception, that a girl’s education should be nearly, in its course and material of study, the same as a boy’s; but quite differently directed. A woman, in any rank of life, ought to know whatever her husband is likely to know, but to know it in a different way... [A] man ought to know any language or science he learns, thoroughly—while a woman ought to know the same language, or science, only so far as may enable her to sympathize in her husband’s pleasures, and in those of his best friends. (111)

John Ruskin, Of Queen's Gardens (education)

There is not a war in the world, no, not an injustice, but you women are answerable for it; not in that you have provoked, but in that you have not hindered. . . . There is no suffering, so injustice, no misery, in the earth, but the guilt of it lies with you. (127-128)

John Ruskin, Of Queens' Gardens

You who come of a younger and happier generation may not have heard of her--you may not know what I mean by the Angel in the House. I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it—in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all— I need not say it—she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty—her blushes, her great grace. In those days—the last of Queen Victoria—every house had its Angel. And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. Directly, that is to say, I took my pen in my hand to review that novel by a famous man, she slipped behind me and whispered: “My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure.”

Virginia Woolf, Professions for Women

And she made as if to guide my pen. I now record the one act for which I take some credit to myself, though the credit rightly belongs to some excellent ancestors of mine who left me a certain sum of money--shall we say five hundred pounds a year?—so that it was not necessary for me to depend solely on charm for my living. I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defence. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing.

Virginia Woolf, Professions for Women

Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extravagantly. It is verily this degradation of the operative into a machine, which, more than any other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhere into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom of which they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their universal outcry against wealth, and against nobility, is not forced from them either by the pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. These do much, and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of society were never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make their bread.... (N 393)

John Ruskin, Stones of Venice

Now, in the make and nature of every man ... whom we employ in manual labor, there are some powers for better things: some tardy imagination, torpid capacity of emotion .... and in most cases it is all our own fault that they are tardy or torpid. But they cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to take them in their feebleness, and unless we prize and honor them in their imperfection above the best and most perfect manual skill. And this is what we have to do with all our laborers; to look for the thoughtful part of them, and get that out of them, whatever we lose for it, whatever faults and errors we are obliged to take with it. (N 391-392)

John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

For the best that is in them cannot manifest itself, but in company with much error. Understand this clearly: You can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool. (N 392)

John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either made a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. . . . On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dullness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also.... (N 392)

John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. “By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me? The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: May’st hear the merry din.” He holds him with his skinny hand, “There was a ship,” quoth he. “Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!” Eftsoons his hand dropt he. He holds him with his glittering eye— The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years’ child: The Mariner hath his will.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy.

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

The Argument Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burdend air, Hungry clouds swag on the deep. Once meek, and in a perilous path, The just man kept his course along The vale of death. Roses are planted where thorns grow, And on the barren heath Sing the honey bees. Then the perilous path was planted, And a river, and a spring On every cliff and tomb; And on the bleached bones Red clay brought forth; Till the villain left the paths of ease, To walk in perilous paths, and drive The just man into barren climes.

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid. If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry “ ’weep! ’weep! ’weep! ’weep!” So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said, “Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head’s bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.” And so he was quiet, & that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;

William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper

And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins & set them all free; Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run, And wash in a river and shine in the Sun. Then naked & white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind. And the Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy, He’d have God for his father & never want joy. And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark And got with our bags & our brushes to work. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm; So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper

My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child: But I am black as if bereav’d of light. My mother taught me underneath a tree, And sitting down before the heat of day, She took me on her lap and kissèd me, And pointing to the east began to say: Look on the rising sun: there God does live And gives his light, and gives his heat away; And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday. And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love, And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove. For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice. Saying: come out from the grove my love & care, And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice. Thus did my mother say and kissed me, And thus I say to little English boy. When I from black and he from white cloud free, And round the tent of God like lambs we joy: Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear, To lean in joy upon our father’s knee. And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair, And be like him and he will then love me.

William Blake, The Little Black Boy

’Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, The children walking two & two, in red & blue & green; Grey headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames’ waters flow O what a multitude they seemd these flowers of London town! Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own. The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands, Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song, Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among. Beneath them sit the agèd men wise guardians of the poor; Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

William Blake, Songs of Innocence: Holy Thursday

Is this a holy thing to see, In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduced to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand? Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty! And their sun does never shine, And their fields are bleak & bare, And their ways are fill’d with thorns. It is eternal winter there. For where-e’er the sun does shine, And where-e’er the rain does fall: Babe can never hunger there, Nor poverty the mind appall.

William Blake, Songs of Experience: Holy Thursday

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet?

William Blake, The Tyger (Songs of Experience)

What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears And water’d heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake, The Tyger (Songs of Experience)

And often, while the moaning wind Stole o'er the summer ocean, The moonlight scene was all serene, The waters scarce in motion; Then, while the smoothly slanting sand The tall cliff wrapp'd in shade, The fisherman beheld a band Of spectres gliding hand in hand– Where the green billows play’d. And pale their faces were as snow, And sullenly they wander'd; And to the skies with hollow eyes They look'd as though they ponder'd. And sometimes, from their hammock shroud, They dismal howlings made, And while the blast blew strong and loud, The clear moon mark'd the ghastly crowd, And then above the haunted hut The curlews screaming hover'd; And the low door, with furious roar, The frothy breakers cover'd. For in the fisherman's lone shed A murder'd man was laid, With ten wide gashes in his head, And deep was made his sandy bed Where the green billows play’d. A shipwreck'd mariner was he, Doom'd from his home to sever Who swore to be through wind and sea Firm and undaunted ever! And when the wave resistless roll'd, About his arm he made A packet rich of Spanish gold, And, like a British sailor bold, Where the green billows play’d. Plung'd where the billows play'd.

Mary Robinson, The Haunted Beach

Rapt in the visionary theme! Spirit divine! with thee I’ll wander, Where the blue, wavy, lucid stream, ’Mid forest glooms, shall slow meander! With thee I’ll trace the circling bounds Of thy new Paradise extended; And listen to the varying sounds Of winds, and foamy torrents blended. Now by the source which lab’ring heaves The mystic fountain, bubbling, panting, While gossamer its net-work weaves, Adown the blue lawn slanting! Spirit divine! with thee I’ll trace Imagination’s boundless space! With thee, beneath thy sunny dome, I’ll listen to the minstrel’s lay, Hymning the gradual close of day; In caves of ice enchanted roam, Where on the glitt’ring entrance plays The moon-beam with its silv’ry rays [. . .] I’ll mark thy sunny dome, and view Thy caves of ice, thy fields of dew!

Mary Robinson, To The Poet Coleridge

Beneath an old wall, that went round an old castle, For many a year, with brown ivy o'erspread; A neat little hovel, its lowly roof raising, Defied the wild winds that howl'd over its shed: The turrets, that frown'd on the poor simple dwelling, Were rock'd to and fro, when the tempest would roar, And the river, that down the rich valley was swelling, Flow'd swiftly beside the green step of its door. The summer sun gilded the rushy roof slanting, The bright dews bespangled its ivy-bound hedge, And above, on the ramparts, the sweet birds were chanting, And wild buds thick dappled the clear river's edge, When the castle's rich chambers were haunted and dreary, The poor little hovel was still and secure; And no robber e'er enter'd, nor goblin nor fairy, For the splendours of pride had no charms to allure.

Mary Robinson, The Poor Singing Dame

It has been said that each of these poems has a purpose. Another circumstance must be mentioned which distinguishes these poems from the popular poetry of the day; it is this, that the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling. (N 307)

William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads

Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves ’Mid groves and copses. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!

William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

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 the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.

William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

’Tis now the hour When Contemplation, from her sunless haunts, The cool damp grotto, or the lonely depth Of unpierced woods, where wrapt in solid shade She mused away the gaudy hours of noon, And fed on thoughts unripened by the sun, Moves forward; and with radiant finger points To yon blue concave swelled by breath divine, Where, one by one, the living eyes of heaven Awake, quick kindling o’er the face of ether One boundless blaze; ten thousand trembling fires, And dancing lustres, where the unsteady eye, Restless and dazzled, wanders unconfined O'er all this field of glories, spacious field. . .

Anna Letitia Barbauld, A Summer Evening's Meditation

She was an elfin pinnace; lustily I dipped my oars into the silent lake, And, as I rose upon the stroke my boat Went heaving through the water like a swan— When from behind that craggy steep, till then The bound of the horizon, a huge cliff, As if with voluntary power instinct, Upreared its head. I struck, and struck again, And, growing still in stature, the huge cliff Rose up between me and the stars, and still With measured motion, like a living thing, Strode after me. With trembling hands I turned, And through the silent water stole my way Back to the cavern of the willow-tree.

William Wordsworth, The Prelude Book 1

The IMAGINATION, then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. 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. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, coexisting with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate: or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still, at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (ch.13)

FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (ch.13)

The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination. This power, first put in action by the will and understanding, and retained under their irremissive, though gentle and unnoticed, control . . . reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order; judgement ever awake and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (ch.14)

During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moon-light or sunset diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria

My own differences from certain supposed parts of Mr. Wordsworth's theory ground themselves on the assumption, that his words had been rightly interpreted, as purporting that the proper diction for poetry in general consists altogether in a language taken, with due exceptions, from the mouths of men in real life, a language which actually constitutes the natural conversation of men under the influence of natural feelings. My objection is, first, that in any sense this rule is applicable only to certain classes of poetry; secondly, that even to these classes it is not applicable, except in such a sense as hath never by anyone (as far as I know or have read) been denied or doubted; and lastly, that as far as, and in that degree in which it is practicable, yet as a rule it is useless, if not injurious, and therefore either need not, or ought not to be practised.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria

In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (ch.14)

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. “By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me? The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: May'st hear the merry din.” He holds him with his skinny hand, “There was a ship,' quoth he. 'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!” Eftsoons his hand dropt he. He holds him with his glittering eye— The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years' child: The Mariner hath his will.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ’twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

In the hardest-working part of Coketown; in the innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in; at the heart of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close streets upon streets, which had come into existence piecemeal, every piece in a violent hurry for some one man’s purpose, and the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one another to death; in the last close nook of this great exhausted receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to make a draught, were built in an immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes, as though every house put out a sign of the kind of people who might be expected to be born in it; among the multitude of Coketown, generically called “the Hands,”—a race who would have found more favour with some people, if Providence had seen fit to make them only hands, or, like the lower creatures of the seashore, only hands and stomachs—lived a certain Stephen Blackpool, forty years of age.

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

The Fairy Palaces burst into illumination before pale morning showed the monstrous serpents of smoke trailing themselves over Coketown. A clattering of clogs upon the pavement, a rapid ringing of bells, and all the melancholy mad elephants, polished and oiled up for the day’s monotony, were at their heavy exercise again. Stephen bent over his loom, quiet, watchful, and steady. A special contrast, as every man was in the forest of looms where Stephen worked, to the crashing, smashing, tearing piece of mechanism at which he laboured.

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!” The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,—all helped the emphasis.

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

From the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly. As he now leaned back in his chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in his turn, perhaps he might have seen one wavering moment in her, when she was impelled to throw herself upon his breast, and give him the pent-up confidences of her heart. But, to see it, he must have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for many years been erecting, between himself and all those subtle essences of humanity which will elude the utmost cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck. The barriers were too many and too high for such a leap. With his unbending, utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again; and the moment shot away into the plumbless depths of the past, to mingle with all the lost opportunities that are drowned there. Removing her eyes from him, she sat so long looking silently towards the town, that he said, at length: ‘Are you consulting the chimneys of the Coketown works, Louisa?’ ‘There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke. Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out, father!’ she answered, turning quickly. ‘Of course I know that, Louisa. I do not see the application of the remark.’ To do him justice he did not, at all.

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

“Louisa,” returned her father, . . .“Confining yourself rigidly to Fact, the question of Fact you state to yourself is: Does Mr. Bounderby ask me to marry him? Yes, he does. The sole remaining question then is: Shall I marry him? I think nothing can be plainer than that?” “Shall I marry him?” repeated Louisa, with great deliberation. “Precisely. And it is satisfactory to me, as your father, my dear Louisa, to know that you do not come to the consideration of that question with the previous habits of mind, and habits of life, that belong to many young women.” “No, father,” she returned, “I do not.” .... “[Life]is short, no doubt, my dear. Still, the average duration of human life is proved to have increased of late years. The calculations of various life assurance and annuity offices, among other figures which cannot go wrong, have established the fact.” “I speak of my own life, father.” “Oh, indeed? Still,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “I need not point out to you, Louisa, that it is governed by the laws which govern lives in the aggregate.”

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

“And you were his comfort through everything?” She nodded, with the tears rolling down her face. “I hope so, and father said I was. It was because he grew so scared and trembling, and because he felt himself to be a poor, weak, ignorant, helpless man (those used to be his words), that he wanted me so much to know a great deal, and be different from him. I used to read to him to cheer his courage, and he was very fond of that. They were wrong books—I am never to speak of them here—but we didn’t know there was any harm in them.” “And he liked them?” said Louisa, with a searching gaze on Sissy all this time. “O very much! They kept him, many times, from what did him real harm. And often and often of a night, he used to forget all his troubles in wondering whether the Sultan would let the lady go on with the story, or would have her head cut off before it was finished.” “And your father was always kind? To the last?” asked Louisa contravening the great principle, and wondering very much.

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger- point, and the soul’s force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last—a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity. On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dullness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also....

John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

Among the fine gentlemen not regularly belonging to the Gradgrind school, there was one of a good family and a better appearance, with a happy turn of humour which had told immensely with the House of Commons on the occasion of his entertaining it with his (and the Board of Directors’) view of a railway accident.... Now, this gentleman had a younger brother of still better appearance than himself, who had tried life as a Cornet of Dragoons, and found it a bore; and had afterwards tried it in the train of an English minister abroad, and found it a bore; and had then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored there; and had then gone yachting about the world, and got bored everywhere. To whom this honourable and jocular member fraternally said one day, “Jem, there’s a good opening among the hard Fact fellows, and they want men. I wonder you don’t go in for statistics.” Jem, rather taken by the novelty of the idea, and very hard up for a change, was as ready to “go in” for statistics as for anything else. So, he went in.

Charles Dickens, Hard Times (dandy)

As to Mr. Harthouse, whither he tended, he neither considered nor cared. He had no particular design or plan before him: no energetic wickedness ruffled his lassitude. He was as much amused and interested, at present, as it became so fine a gentleman to be; perhaps even more than it would have been consistent with his reputation to confess. Soon after his arrival he languidly wrote to his brother, the honourable and jocular member, that the Bounderbys were “great fun”; and further, that the female Bounderby, instead of being the Gorgon he had expected, was young, and remarkably pretty.... Mr. James Harthouse began to think it would be a new sensation, if the face which changed so beautifully for the whelp would change for him.

Charles Dickens, Hard Times (dandy)

He was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not. A big, loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh. A man made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him. A man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such a strained skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open, and lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility. A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr. Bounderby looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had the seven or eight added to it again, without surprising anybody. He had not much hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off; and that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness.

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

Charles Dickens, Hard Times (dandy)

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

“Thank you. I had no intention of delivering my letter at the present moment, nor have I. But strolling on to the Bank to kill time, and having the good fortune to observe at the window,” towards which he languidly waved his hand, then slightly bowed, “a lady of a very superior and agreeable appearance, I considered that I could not do better than take the liberty of asking that lady where Mr. Bounderby the Banker does live. Which I accordingly venture, with all suitable apologies, to do.” The inattention and indolence of his manner were sufficiently relieved, to Mrs. Sparsit’s thinking, by a certain gallantry at ease, which offered her homage too. Here he was, for instance, at this moment, all but sitting on the table, and yet lazily bending over her, as if he acknowledged an attraction in her that made her charming—in her way.

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

“Father, you have trained me from my cradle?” “Yes, Louisa.” “I curse the hour in which I was born to such a destiny.” He looked at her in doubt and dread, vacantly repeating: “Curse the hour? Curse the hour?” “How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, O father, what have you done, with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here!” She struck herself with both her hands upon her bosom. “If it had ever been here, its ashes alone would save me from the void in which my whole life sinks. I did not mean to say this; but, father, you remember the last time we conversed in this room?” He had been so wholly unprepared for what he heard now, that it was with difficulty he answered, “Yes, Louisa.” “What has risen to my lips now, would have risen to my lips then, if you had given me a moment’s help. I don’t reproach you, father. What you have never nurtured in me, you have never nurtured in yourself. . . .” On hearing this, after all his care, he bowed his head upon his hand and groaned aloud.

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

VIVIAN. As long as a thing is useful or necessary to us ... it is outside the proper sphere of Art. CYRIL. [S]urely you would acknowledge that Art expresses the temper of its age, the spirit of its time, the moral and social conditions that surround it, and under whose influence it is produced. VIVIAN. Certainly not! Art never expresses anything but itself. This is the principle of the new æsthetics; and it is this, more than that vital connection between form and substance, on which Mr. Pater dwells, that makes music the type of all the arts.

Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying

CYRIL (coming in through the open window from the terrace): My dear Vivian, don’t coop yourself up all day in the library. It is a perfectly lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a mist upon the woods like the purple bloom upon a plum. Let us go and lie on the grass, and smoke cigarettes, and enjoy Nature.

Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying

VIVIAN: Enjoy Nature! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost that faculty. People tell us that Art makes us love Nature more than we loved her before; that it reveals her secrets to us; and that after a careful study of Corot and Constable we see things in her that had escaped our observation. My own experience is that the more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature’s lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out. When I look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. It is fortunate for us, however, that Nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we should have had no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place. As for the infinite variety of Nature, that is a pure myth. It is not to be found in Nature herself. It resides in the imagination, or fancy, or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at her.

Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying

But Nature is so uncomfortable. Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects. Why, even Morris’ poorest workman could make you a more comfortable seat than the whole of Nature can. Nature pales before the furniture of “the street which from Oxford has borrowed its name,” as the poet you love so much once vilely phrased it. I don’t complain. If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture, and I prefer houses to the openair. In a house we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure. . . .Out of doors one becomes abstract and impersonal. One’s individuality absolutely leaves one. And then Nature is so indifferent, so unappreciative. Whenever I am walking in the park here, I always feel that I am no more to her than the cattle that browse on the slope, or the burdock that blooms in the ditch. Nothing is more evident than that Nature hates Mind.

Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying

CYRIL: ....But what do you say about the return to Life and Nature? This is the panacea that is always being recommended to us. VIVIAN: I will read you what I say on that subject. The passage comes later on in the article, but I may as well give it to you now:-- “The popular cry of our time is ‘Let us return to Life and Nature; they will recreate Art for us, and send the red blood coursing through her veins; they will shoe her feet with swiftness and make her hand strong.’ But, alas! we are mistaken in our amiable and well-meaning efforts. Nature is always behind the age. And as for Life, she is the solvent that breaks up Art, the enemy that lays waste her house.”

Oscar Wilde, The Decay of LYing

“To see the object as in itself it really is,” has been justly said to be the aim of all true criticism whatever; and in aesthetic criticism the first step towards seeing one's object as it really is, is to know one's own impression as it really is, to discriminate it, to realise it distinctly. The objects with which aesthetic criticism deals—music, poetry, artistic and accomplished forms of human life—are indeed receptacles of so many powers or forces: they possess, like the products of nature, so many virtues or qualities. What is this song or picture, this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to me? What effect does it really produce on me? Does it give me pleasure? and if so, what sort or degree of pleasure? How is my nature modified by its presence, and under its influence? The answers to these questions are the original facts with which the aesthetic critic has to do. . . .

Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance

At first sight experience seems to bury us under a flood of external objects, pressing upon us with a sharp and importunate reality, calling us out of ourselves in a thousand forms of action. But when reflexion begins to play upon these objects they are dissipated under its influence; the cohesive force seems suspended like some trick of magic; each object is loosed into a group of impressions–colour, odour, texture–in the mind of the observer. And if we continue to dwell in thought on this world, not of objects in the solidity with which language invests them, but of impressions, unstable, flickering, inconsistent, which burn and are extinguished with our consciousness of them, it contracts still further: the whole scope of observation is dwarfed into the narrow chamber of the individual mind. Experience, already reduced to a group of impressions, is ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we can only conjecture to be without.

Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance

While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist’s hands, or the face of one’s friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions....

Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance

Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which comes naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion – that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments’ sake.

Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance

We caught the tread of dancing feet, We loitered down the moonlit street, And stopped beneath the harlot's house. Inside, above the din and fray, We heard the loud musicians play The 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss. Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind. We watched the ghostly dancers spin To sound of horn and violin, Like black leaves wheeling in the wind. Like wire-pulled automatons, Slim silhouetted skeletons Went sidling through the slow quadrille, Then took each other by the hand, And danced a stately saraband; Their laughter echoed thin and shrill. Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed A phantom lover to her breast, Sometimes they seemed to try to sing. Sometimes a horrible marionette Came out, and smoked its cigarette Upon the steps like a live thing. Then, turning to my love, I said, “The dead are dancing with the dead, The dust is whirling with the dust.” But she--she heard the violin, And left my side, and entered in: Love passed into the house of lust. Then suddenly the tune went false, The dancers wearied of the waltz, The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl. And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.

Oscar Wilde, The Harlot's House

How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.

Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

W.B. Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree

The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation, by hushing us with an alluring monotony, while it holds us waking by variety, to keep us in that state of perhaps real trance, in which the mind liberated from the pressure of the will is unfolded in symbols.

W.B. Yeats, The Symbolism of Poetry

W.B. Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree

We sat together at one summer’s end, That beautiful mild woman, your close friend, And you and I, and talked of poetry. I said, “A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been naught. Better go down upon your marrow-bones And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather; For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world.” And thereupon That beautiful mild woman for whose sake There’s many a one shall find out all heartache On finding that her voice is sweet and low Replied, “To be born woman is to know— Although they do not talk of it at school— That we must labour to be beautiful.” I said, “It’s certain there is no fine thing Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring. There have been lovers who thought love should be So much compounded of high courtesy That they would sigh and quote with learned looks Precedents out of beautiful old books; Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.”

W.B. Yeats, Adam's Curse

We sat grown quiet at the name of love; We saw the last embers of daylight die, And in the trembling blue-green of the sky A moon, worn as if it had been a shell Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell About the stars and broke in days and years. I had a thought for no one’s but your ears: That you were beautiful, and that I strove To love you in the old high way of love; That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

W.B. Yeats, Adam's Curse

The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men; and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way; and, further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement. Low and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity [. . . ] (N 305).

William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads

I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desart [sic]. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

Much have I travel’d in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men Look’d at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

John Keats, On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Then by the bed-side, where the faded moon Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set A table, and, half anguish’d, threw thereon A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet:— O for some drowsy Morphean amulet! The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion, The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarionet, Affray his ears, though but in dying tone:— The hall door shuts again, and all the noise is gone. And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep, In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender’d, While he from forth the closet brought a heap Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd; With jellies soother than the creamy curd, And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon; Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one, From silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon.

John Keats, The Even of St Agnes

On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And through the field the road runs by To many-towered Camelot; And up and down the people go, Gazing where the lilies blow Round an island there below, The island of Shalott. Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver Through the wave that runs for ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls, and four gray towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott.

Alfred Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott

There she weaves by night and day A magic web with colours gay. She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be, And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott. And moving through a mirror clear That hangs before her all the year, Shadows of the world appear. There she sees the highway near Winding down to Camelot; There the river eddy whirls, And there the surly village-churls, And the red cloaks of market girls, Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, An abbot on an ambling pad, Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad, Or long-haired page in crimson clad, Goes by to towered Camelot; And sometimes through the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two: She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott. But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights, For often through the silent nights A funeral, with plumes and lights And music, went to Camelot: Or when the moon was overhead, Came two young lovers lately wed; "I am half sick of shadows," said Pass onward from Shalott. The Lady of Shalott.

Alfred Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott

It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel; I will drink Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known—cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honored of them all— And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses

But do not let us quarrel any more, No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once: Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear, Treat his own subject after his own way, Fix his own time, accept too his own price, And shut the money into this small hand When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?

Robert Browning, andrea del Sarto

I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave! You need not clap your torches to my face. Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk! What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds, And here you catch me at an alley's end Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar? The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up, Do,—harry out, if you must show your zeal...

Robert Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi

And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: --Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner south He graced his carrion with, God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence One sees the pulpit o’ the epistle side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. --Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! (15-33)

Robert Browning, The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church

I was immediately sent to work in the salt water with the rest of the slaves. This work was perfectly new to me. I was given a half barrel and a shovel, and had to stand up to my knees in the water, from four o'clock in the morning till nine, when we were given some Indian corn boiled in water, which we were obliged to swallow as fast as we could for fear the rain should come on and melt the salt. We were then called again to our tasks, and worked through the heat of the day; the sun flaming upon our heads like fire, and raising salt blisters in those parts which were not completely covered. Our feet and legs, from standing in the salt water for so many hours, soon became full of dreadful boils, which eat down in some cases to the very bone, afflicting the sufferers with great torment.

Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself

I am often much vexed, and I feel great sorrow when I hear some people in this country say, that the slaves do not need better usage, and do not want to be free. They believe the foreign people who deceive them, and say slaves are happy. I say, Not so. How can slaves be happy when they have the halter round their neck and the whip upon their back? and are disgraced and thought no more of than beasts?—and are separated from their mothers, and husbands, and children, and sisters, just as cattle are sold and separated? Is it happiness for a driver in the field to take down his wife or sister or child, and strip them, and whip them in such a disgraceful manner?—women that have had children exposed in the open field to shame! ...................... I have been a slave myself—I know what slaves feel—I can tell by myself what other slaves feel, and by what they have told me. The man that says slaves be quite happy in slavery—that they don't want to be free—that man is either ignorant or a lying person.

Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself

This paper, though not devoid of inconsistencies, which will be apparent to any attentive reader, is craftily expressed; and was well devised to serve the purpose which the writer had obviously in view, namely, to frustrate any appeal which the friendless black woman might make to the sympathy of strangers, and thus prevent her from obtaining an asylum, if she left his house, from any respectable family. As she had no one to refer to for a character in this country except himself, he doubtless calculated securely on her being speedily driven back, as soon as the slender fund she had in her possession was expended, to throw herself unconditionally upon his tender mercies. . . . Here perhaps we might safely leave the case to the judgment of the public; but as [Mary Prince’s] character, not the less valuable to her because her condition is so humble, has been so unscrupulously blackened by her late master, a party so much interested and inclined to place her in the worst point of view,—it is incumbent on me, as her advocate with the public, to state such additional testimony in her behalf as I can fairly and conscientiously adduce.

Thomas Pringle, editor of “The History of Mary Prince,”

While I was on board this ship, my captain and master named me Gustavus Vassa. I at that time began to understand him a little, and refused to be called so, and told him as well as I could that I would be called Jacob; but he said I should not, and still called me Gustavus; and when I refused to answer to my new name, which at first I did, it gained me many a cuff; so at length I submitted, and was obliged to bear the present name, by which I have been known ever since.`

Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative

This Christian master immediately pinned the wretch down to the ground at each wrist and ancle [sic], and then took some sticks of sealing wax, and lighted them, and dropped it all over his back. There was another master who was noted for cruelty; and I believe he had not a slave but what had been cut, and had pieces fairly taken out of the flesh . . . Is it surprising that usage like this should drive the poor creatures to despair, and make them seek a refuge in death from those evils which render their lives intolerable—while, "With shudd’ring horror pale, and eyes aghast, They view their lamentable lot, and find No rest!”

Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud`

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind

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 hearth Ashes 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?

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind

John Keats, On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!

William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

—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 the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.

William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

—A simple Child That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death? I met a little cottage Girl, She was eight years old, she said; Her hair was thick with many a curl That clustered round her head. She had a rustic, woodland air, And she was wildly clad; Her eyes were fair, and very fair, —Her beauty made me glad.

William Wordsworth, We Are Seven

The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose, The Moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare, Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where’er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound As to the tabor’s sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: [. . .]

William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality

The obstacles against her are still immensely powerful—and yet they are very difficult to define. Outwardly, what is simpler than to write books? Outwardly, what obstacles are there for a woman rather than for a man? Inwardly, I think, the case is very different; she has still many ghosts to fight, many prejudices to overcome. Indeed it will be a long time still, I think, before a woman can sit down to write a book without finding a phantom to be slain, a rock to be dashed against. And if this is so in literature, the freest of all professions for women, how is it in the new professions which you are now for the first time entering? Those are the questions that I should like, had I time, to ask you. And indeed, if I have laid stress upon these professional experiences of mine, it is because I believe that they are, though in different forms, yours also. Even when the path is nominally open—when there is nothing to prevent a woman from being a doctor, a lawyer, a civil servant—there are many phantoms and obstacles, as I believe, looming in her way. To discuss and define them is I think of great value and importance; for thus only can the labour be shared, the difficulties be solved. But besides this, it is necessary also to discuss the ends and the aims for which we are fighting, for which we are doing battle with these formidable obstacles. Those aims cannot be taken for granted; they must be perpetually questioned and examined.

Virginia Woolf, Professions for Women

It was a splendid morning too. Like the pulse of a perfect heart, life struck straight through the streets. There was no fumbling—no hesitation. Sweeping and swerving, accurately, punctually, noiselessly, there, precisely at the right instant, the motor-car stopped at the door. The girl, silk-stockinged, feathered, evanescent, but not to him particularly attractive (for he had had his fling), alighted. Admirable butlers, tawny chow dogs, halls laid in black and white lozenges with white blinds blowing, Peter saw through the opened door and approved of. A splendid achievement in its own way, after all, London; the season; civilisation. Coming as he did from a respectable Anglo-Indian family which for at least three generations had administered the affairs of a continent (it's strange, he thought, what a sentiment I have about that, disliking India, and empire, and army as he did), there were moments when civilisation, even of this sort, seemed dear to him as a personal possession; moments of pride in England; in butlers; chow dogs; girls in their security. Ridiculous enough, still there it is, he thought. And the doctors and men of business and capable women all going about their business, punctual, alert, robust, seemed to him wholly admirable, good fellows, to whom one would entrust one's life, companions in the art of living, who would see one through. What with one thing and another, the show was really very tolerable; and he would sit down in the shade and smoke.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (Peter Walsh speaking)

The young man had killed himself; but she did not pity him; with the clock striking the hour, one, two, three, she did not pity him, with all this going on. There! the old lady had put out her light! the whole house was dark now with this going on, she repeated, and the words came to her, Fear no more the heat of the sun. She must go back to them. But what an extraordinary night! She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. But she must go back. She must assemble. She must find Sally and Peter. And she came in from the little room.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Whirl up, sea— whirl your pointed pines, splash your great pines on our rocks, hurl your green over us, cover us with your pools of fir.

H.D., Oread

Rose, harsh rose, marred and with stint of petals, meagre flower, thin, sparse of leaf, more precious than a wet rose single on a stem— you are caught in the drift. Stunted, with small leaf, you are flung on the sand, you are lifted in the crisp sand that drives in the wind. Can the spice-rose drip such acrid fragrance hardened in a leaf?

H.D., Sea Rose

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.”

T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

He waited outside the drawing-room door until the waltz should finish, listening to the skirts that swept against it and to the shuffling of feet. He was still discomposed by the girl’s bitter and sudden retort. It had cast a gloom over him which he tried to dispel by arranging his cuffs and the bows of his tie. He then took from his waistcoat pocket a little paper and glanced at the headings he had made for his speech. He was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they would recognise from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better. The indelicate clacking of the men’s heels and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not understand. They would think that he was airing his superior education. He would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl in the pantry. He had taken up a wrong tone. His whole speech was a mistake from first to last, an utter failure.

James Joyce, The Dead

It is, at any rate, in some such fashion as this that we seek to define the quality which distinguishes the work of several young writers, among whom Mr. James Joyce is the most notable, from that of their predecessors. They attempt to come closer to life, and to preserve more sincerely and exactly what interests and moves them, even if to do so they must discard most of the conventions which are commonly observed by the novelist. Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small. Any one who has read The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or, what promises to be a far more interesting work, Ulysses, now appearing in the Little Review, will have hazarded some theory of this nature as to Mr. Joyce's intention. On our part, with such a fragment before us, it is hazarded rather than affirmed; but whatever the intention of the whole, there can be no question but that it is of the utmost sincerity and that the result, difficult or unpleasant as we may judge it, is undeniably important. In contrast with those whom we have called materialists, Mr. Joyce is spiritual; he is concerned at all costs to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its messages through the brain. . . .

Virginia Woolf, Modern Fiction

Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being “like this.” Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions—trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it.

Virginia Woolf, Modern Fiction

A fat brown goose lay at one end of the table and at the other end, on a bed of creased paper strewn with sprigs of parsley, lay a great ham, stripped of its outer skin and peppered over with crust crumbs, a neat paper frill round its shin and beside this was a round of spiced beef. Between these rival ends ran parallel lines of side-dishes: two little minsters of jelly, red and yellow; a shallow dish full of blocks of blancmange and red jam, a large green leaf-shaped dish with a stalk-shaped handle, on which lay bunches of purple raisins and peeled almonds, a companion dish on which lay a solid rectangle of Smyrna figs, a dish of custard topped with grated nutmeg, a small bowl full of chocolates and sweets wrapped in gold and silver papers and a glass vase in which stood some tall celery stalks. In the centre of the table there stood, as sentries to a fruit-stand which upheld a pyramid of oranges and American apples, two squat old- fashioned decanters of cut glass, one containing port and the other dark sherry. On the closed square piano a pudding in a huge yellow dish lay in waiting and behind it were three squads of bottles of stout and ale and minerals, drawn up according to the colours of their uniforms, the first two black, with brown and red labels, the third and smallest squad white, with transverse green sashes.

James Joyce, The Dead

And this sort of thing was happening at a time when the English people starting to make rab about how too much West Indians coming to the country. . . In fact, the boys all over London . . . and big discussion going on in Parliament about the situation, though the old Brit’n too diplomatic to clamp down on the boys or to do anything drastic like stop them from coming to the Mother Country. But big headlines in the papers every day, and whatever the newspaper and the radio say in this country, that is the people Bible. Like one time when newspapers say that the West Indians think that the streets of London paved with gold.

Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners

As if, on the surface, things don’t look so bad, but when you go down a little, you bounce up a kind of misery and pathos and a frightening – what? . . . As if the boys laughing, but they only laughing because they fraid to cry, they only laughing because to think so much about everything would be a big calamity, like how he here now, his thoughts so heavy he unable to move his body.

Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners

As we accompany Moses, veteran black Londoner on his routine journey to welcome yet another newcomer into the fold, Selvon swiftly transports us into the tragicomic urban theatre of his fictional world. It is a labyrinthine city that his cast of rootless, unlettered characters soon learn to survive in and reinvent. As [a] . . . chronicle of post-war Caribbean migration to Britain, The Lonely Londoners encapsulates the romance and disenchantment of an imagined city that was both magnet and nightmare for its new colonial citizens, a promised land that despite its glittering lure turns out to be an illusion.

Susheila Nästa, Introduction to The Lonely Londoners

One grim winter evening, when it had a kind of unrealness about London, with a fog sleeping restlessly over the city and the lights showing in the blur as if it is not London at all but some strange place on another planet, Moses Aloetta hop on a number 46 bus at the corner of Chepstow Road and Westbourne Grove to go to Waterloo to meet a fellar who was coming from Trinidad on the boat-train. When Moses sit down and pay his far he take out a white handkerchief and blow his nose. The handkerchief turn black and Moses watch it and curse the fog. He wasn’t in a good mood and the fog wasn’t doing anything to help the situation.

Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners

But Galahad feel like a king living in London. . . .The first time he take a craft out . . . one of the first things he do after he get a work was to stock up with clothes like stupidness, as if to make up for all the hard times when he didn’t have nice things to wear. So this is Galahad dressing up for the date: he clean his shoes until they shine, then he put on a little more Cherry Blossom and give them an extra shine, until he could see his face in the leather. Next he put on a new pair of socks – nylon splice in the heel and toe. He have to put on woollen underwear, though is summer. Then a shirt – a white Van Heusen. Which tie to wear?

Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners

Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up Fostered alike by beauty and by fear, Much favoured in my birthplace, and no less In that beloved vale to which erelong I was transplanted.

William Wordsworth, The Prelude (book 1)

Anna Letitia Barbauld, A Summer Evening's Meditation

No sooner had I sight of this small skiff, Discovered thus by unexpected chance, Than I unloosed her tether and embarked. The moon was up, the lake was shining clear Among the hoary mountains; from the shore I pushed, and struck the oars, and struck again In cadence, and my little boat moved on Even like a Man who walks with stately step Though bent on speed. It was an act of stealth And troubled pleasure. Nor without the voice Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on, Leaving behind her still on either side Small circles glittering idly in the moon....

William Wordsworth, The Prelude (Book 1)

William Wordsworth, The Prelude (book 1)

Cease, Wilberforce, to urge thy generous aim! Thy Country knows the sin, and stands the shame! The Preacher, Poet, Senator in vain Has rattled in her sight the Negro's chain; With his deep groans assail'd her startled ear, And rent the veil that hid his constant tear; Forc'd her averted eyes his stripes to scan, Beneath the bloody scourge laid bare the man. . . .

Anna Letitia Barbauld, Epistle to William Wilberforce

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria

The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when they present themselves. (N 497)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria

Beneath an old wall, that went round an old castle, For many a year, with brown ivy o'erspread; A neat little hovel, its lowly roof raising, Defied the wild winds that howl'd over its shed: The turrets, that frown'd on the poor simple dwelling, Were rock'd to and fro, when the tempest would roar, And the river, that down the rich valley was swelling, Flow'd swiftly beside the green step of its door. The summer sun gilded the rushy roof slanting, The bright dews bespangled its ivy-bound hedge, And above, on the ramparts, the sweet birds were chanting, And wild buds thick dappled the clear river's edge, When the castle's rich chambers were haunted and dreary, The poor little hovel was still and secure; And no robber e'er enter’d, nor goblin nor fairy, For the splendours of pride had no charms to allure.

Mary Robinson, the Poor Singing Dame

The education of women has, of late, been more attended to than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavour by satire or instruction to improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments: meanwhile, strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves, the only way women can rise in the world—by marriage. And this desire making mere animals of them, when they marry, they act as such children may be expected to act: they dress; they paint, and nickname God's creatures. Surely these weak beings are only fit for the seraglio! Can they govern a family, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the world?

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the result? a profound conviction, that the neglected education of my fellow creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore; and that women in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes, originating from one hasty conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove, that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers that are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity. One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men, who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than rational wives; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“How I long to see [Miss Darcy] again! I never met with anybody who delighted me so much. Such a countenance, such manners, and so extremely accomplished for her age! Her performance on the pianoforte is exquisite.” “It is amazing to me,” said Bingley, “how young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are.” “All young ladies accomplished! My dear Charles, what do you mean?” “Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover screens, and net purses. I scarcely know any one who cannot do all this; and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being informed that she was very accomplished.” “Your list of the common extent of accomplishments,” said Darcy, “has too much truth. The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse or covering a screen; but I am very far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general. I cannot boast of knowing more than half-a-dozen in the whole range of my acquaintance that are really accomplished.” . . . . “Then,” observed Elizabeth, “you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman.”

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

[Elizabeth] was shown into the breakfast parlour, where all but Jane were assembled, and where her appearance created a great deal of surprise. That she should have walked three miles so early in the day in such dirty weather, and by herself, was almost incredible to Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley; and Elizabeth was convinced that they held her in contempt for it. She was received, however, very politely by them; and in their brother’s manners there was something better than politeness—there was good-humour and kindness. Mr. Darcy said very little, and Mr. Hurst nothing at all. The former was divided between admiration of the brilliancy which exercise had given to her complexion and doubt as to the occasion’s justifying her coming so far alone. The latter was thinking only of his breakfast.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

With a renewal of tenderness, however, they repaired to her room on leaving the dining- parlour, and sat with her till summoned to coffee. She was still very poorly, and Elizabeth would not quit her at all, till late in the evening, when she had the comfort of seeing her asleep, and when it appeared to her rather right than pleasant that she should go down stairs herself. On entering the drawing-room, she found the whole party at loo, and was immediately invited to join them; but suspecting them to be playing high, she declined it, and making her sister the excuse, said she would amuse herself, for the short time she could stay below, with a book. Mr. Hurst looked at her with astonishment. “Do you prefer reading to cards?” said he; “that is rather singular.” “Miss Eliza Bennet,” said Miss Bingley, “despises cards. She is a great reader, and has no pleasure in anything else.” “I deserve neither such praise nor such censure,” cried Elizabeth; “I am not a great reader, and I have pleasure in many things.” “In nursing your sister I am sure you have pleasure,” said Bingley; “and I hope it will soon be increased by seeing her quite well.” Elizabeth thanked him from her heart, and then walked towards a table where a few books were lying. He immediately offered to fetch her others; all that his library afforded.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

When dinner was over, [Elizabeth] returned directly to Jane, and Miss Bingley began abusing [Elizabeth] as soon as she was out of the room. . . . “She has nothing, in short, to recommend her, but being an excellent walker. I shall never forget her appearance this morning. She really looked almost wild.” “She did indeed, Louisa. I could hardly keep my countenance. Very nonsensical to come at all! Why must she be scampering about the country, because her sister had a cold? Her hair so untidy, so blowsy!” “Yes, and her petticoat; I hope you saw her petticoat, six inches deep in mud, I am absolutely certain, and the gown which had been let down to hide it not doing its office.” “Your picture may be very exact, Louisa,” said Bingley; “but this was all lost upon me. I thought Miss Elizabeth Bennet looked remarkably well when she came into the room this morning. Her dirty petticoat quite escaped my notice.” “You observed it, Mr. Darcy, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley; “and I am inclined to think that you would not wish to see your sister make such an exhibition.” “Certainly not.” “To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ancles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! what could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum.”

Jane Austen, Pride and PRejudice

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. “My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (novel of manners)

She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think, without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd. “How despicably have I acted!” she cried. “I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameless distrust. How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.”

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“She has nothing, in short, to recommend her, but being an excellent walker. I shall never forget her appearance this morning. She really looked almost wild.” “She did indeed, Louisa. I could hardly keep my countenance. Very nonsensical to come at all! Why must she be scampering about the country, because her sister had a cold? Her hair so untidy, so blowsy!” “Yes, and her petticoat; I hope you saw her petticoat, six inches deep in mud, I am absolutely certain, and the gown which had been let down to hide it not doing its office.” “Your picture may be very exact, Louisa,” said Bingley; “but this was all lost upon me. I thought Miss Elizabeth Bennet looked remarkably well when she came into the room this morning. Her dirty petticoat quite escaped my notice.” “You observed it, Mr. Darcy, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley; “and I am inclined to think that you would not wish to see your sister make such an exhibition.” “Certainly not.” “To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ancles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! what could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum.”

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I am afraid, Mr. Darcy,” observed Miss Bingley, in a half whisper, “that this adventure has rather affected your admiration of her fine eyes.” “Not at all,” he replied: “they were brightened by the exercise.” A short pause followed this speech, and Mrs. Hurst began again,— “I have an excessive regard for Jane Bennet,—she is really a very sweet girl,—and I wish with all my heart she were well settled. But with such a father and mother, and such low connections, I am afraid there is no chance of it.” “I think I have heard you say that their uncle is an attorney in Meryton?” “Yes; and they have another, who lives somewhere near Cheapside.” “That is capital,” added her sister; and they both laughed heartily. “If they had uncles enough to fill all Cheapside,” cried Bingley, “it would not make them one jot less agreeable.” “But it must very materially lessen their chance of marrying men of any consideration in the world,” replied Darcy. To this speech Bingley made no answer; but his sisters gave it their hearty assent, and indulged their mirth for some time at the expense of their dear friend’s vulgar relations.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

They were, in fact, very fine ladies; not deficient in good-humour when they were pleased, nor in the power of being agreeable where they chose it; but proud and conceited. They were rather handsome; had been educated in one of the first private seminaries in town; had a fortune of twenty thousand pounds; were in the habit of spending more than they ought, and of associating with people of rank; and were, therefore, in every respect entitled to think well of themselves and meanly of others. They were of a respectable family in the north of England; a circumstance more deeply impressed on their memories than that their brother’s fortune and their own had been acquired by trade.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“You are not going to introduce yourself to Mr. Darcy?” “Indeed I am. I shall entreat his pardon for not having done it earlier. I believe him to be Lady Catherine’s nephew. . . .” Elizabeth tried hard to dissuade [Mr. Collins] from such a scheme; assuring him that Mr. Darcy would consider his addressing him without introduction as an impertinent freedom, rather than a compliment to his aunt; that it was not in the least necessary there should be any notice on either side, and that if it were, it must belong to Mr. Darcy, the superior in consequence, to begin the acquaintance. . . . . . . ... . [W]ith a low bow he left her to attack Mr. Darcy, whose reception of his advances she eagerly watched, and whose astonishment at being so addressed was very evident. . . .It vexed her to see him expose himself to such a man. Mr. Darcy was eyeing him with unrestrained wonder; and when at last Mr. Collins allowed him to speak, replied with an air of distant civility. Mr. Collins, however, was not discouraged from speaking again, and Mr. Darcy’s contempt seemed abundantly increasing with the length of his second speech; and at the end of it he only made him a slight bow, and moved another way: Mr. Collins then returned to Elizabeth.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

In vain did Elizabeth endeavour to check the rapidity of her mother’s words, or persuade her to describe her felicity in a less audible whisper; for to her inexpressible vexation she could perceive that the chief of it was overheard by Mr. Darcy, who sat opposite to them. Her mother only scolded her for being nonsensical. “What is Mr. Darcy to me, pray, that I should be afraid of him? I am sure we owe him no such particular civility as to be obliged to say nothing he may not like to hear.” “For heaven’s sake, madam, speak lower. What advantage can it be to you to offend Mr. Darcy? You will never recommend yourself to his friend by so doing.” Nothing that she could say, however, had any influence. Her mother would talk of her views in the same intelligible tone. Elizabeth blushed and blushed again with shame and vexation. She could not help frequently glancing her eye at Mr. Darcy, though every glance convinced her of what she dreaded; for though he was not always looking at her mother, she was convinced that his attention was invariably fixed by her. The expression of his face changed gradually from indignant contempt to a composed and steady gravity.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“He is the best landlord, and the best master,” said [Mrs. Reynolds], “that ever lived. Not like the wild young men now-a-days, who think of nothing but themselves. There is not one of his tenants or servants but what will give him a good name. Some people call him proud; but I am sure I never saw anything of it. To my fancy, it is only because he does not rattle away like other young men.” “In what an amiable light does this place him!” thought Elizabeth. .. .... . . There was certainly at this moment, in Elizabeth’s mind, a more gentle sensation towards the original than she had ever felt in the height of their acquaintance. The commendation bestowed on him by Mrs. Reynolds was of no trifling nature. What praise is more valuable than the praise of an intelligent servant? As a brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how many people’s happiness were in his guardianship!

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know That things depart which never may return: Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow, Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. These common woes I feel. One loss is mine Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore. Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar: Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood Above the blind and battling multitude: In honoured poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,— Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve, Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, To Wordsworth

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 leechlike to their fainting country cling Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow. A people starved and stabbed in th’ untilled field; An army, whom 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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, England in 1819

According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental action, which are called reason and imagination, the former may be considered as mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought to another, however produced; and the latter, as mind acting upon those thoughts so as to colour them with its own light, and composing from them, as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the principle of its own integrity. The one is the to poiein, the principle of synthesis, and has for its objects those forms which are common to universal nature and existence itself; the other is the to logizein, or principle of analysis, and its action regards the relations of things, simply as relations; considering thoughts, not in their integral unity, but as the algebraical representations which conduct to certain general results. ... . Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be “the expression of the Imagination.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defense of Poetry

The whole objection, however, of the immorality of poetry rests upon a misconception of the manner in which poetry acts to produce the moral improvement of man. Ethical science arranges the elements which poetry has created, and propounds schemes and proposes examples of civil and domestic life. . . But poetry acts in another and diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. . . .The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thought of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defense of Poetry

Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms. . . [I]t purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defense of Poetry

The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is Poetry.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defense of Poetry

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind

I hoped, when I left Capt. I——, that I should have been better off, but I found it was but going from one butcher to another. There was this difference between them: my former master used to beat me while raging and foaming with passion; Mr. D—— was usually quite calm. He would stand by and give orders for a slave to be cruelly whipped, and assist in the punishment, without moving a muscle of his face; walking about and taking snuff with the greatest composure. Nothing could touch his hard heart— neither sighs, nor tears, nor prayers, nor streaming blood; he was deaf to our cries, and careless of our sufferings.

Mary Prince, A History of Mary Prince, Related by Herself

The language that the “boys” bring with them – far more than the cardboard suitcases or tropical suits they arrive with at Waterloo – is a vital survival kit, a means to successfully accommodate them in the city. (xii)

Susheila Nasta, Introduction to The Lonely Londoners

Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners

Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (dandy)

A Flatlet in Bloomsbury, London. Winter 1934. Rita Rae kneeling on rug by coal fire toasting crumpets. She butters her last crumpet, covers them by fire. Draws curtains. Turns on lights. Sits on stool by fire and reads. Closes book with a bang and throws it on chair. Rises slowly and goes over to radio and after some hesitation turns it on. . . . WIRELESS: . . . . The weather forecast for England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland: a low depression centred off Iceland is moving southwest. In England temperatures will be lower tonight by several degrees. Frost and . . . Rita jumps up. Turns off radio. RITA: Curse this weather.

Una Marson, London Calling

RITA: . . . I am just fed up – had enough of this. ALTON: . . . Fed up with me, or with Sydney, London or your priceless drama school? Which is it? RITA: Oh, everything. Do you realise that we have been here for two long eternal years? . . .. .. ALTON: . . . . But really, why do you want to have a coal fire? Have gas or electricity. RITA: Both more expensive. ALTON: But we can run to that. RITA: Not unless we cut out theatre and chicken on Sundays. ALTON: [Rises and goes toward the fireplace.] Now I’ve got it. It’s the food that has got you down. Roast beef and two vegs week in and week out – terrible – cabbages and potato-cauliflower and potato-peas and potato-beans and potato—the one vitable potato—I shall write a sonnet to Potater—the life sustainer! RITA: [Not amused.] Oh, I don’t know – I’ve got used to that, but there are some things, well [Shrugs her shoulders.]

Una Marson, London Calling

Samad took a deep breath. The matter was...what was the matter? The house was the matter. Samad was moving out of East London (where one couldn’t bring up children, indeed, one couldn’t, not if one didn’t wish them to come to bodily harm), from East London, with its National Front gangs, to North London, north-west in fact, where things were more...more...liberal. Ardashir’s eyes glazed over a little as Samad explained his situation.... “I need only a small wage increase to help me finance the move. To make things a little easier as we settle in. And Alsana, well, she is pregnant.”

Zadie Smith, The Waiter's Wife

And that’s what it was like most nights; abuse from Shiva and others; condescension from Ardashir; never seeing Alsana; never seeing the sun; clutching fifteen pence and then releasing it; wanting desperately to be wearing a sign, a large white placard that said: I AM NOT A WAITER. THAT IS, I AM A WAITER, BUT NOT JUST A WAITER. I HAVE BEEN A STUDENT, A SCIENTIST, A SOLDIER. MY WIFE IS CALLED ALSANA. WE LIVE IN EAST LONDON BUT WE WOULD LIKE TO MOVE NORTH. I AM A MUSLIM BUT ALLAH HAS FORSAKEN ME OR I HAVE FORSAKEN ALLAH. I’M NOT SURE. I HAVE AN ENGLISH FRIEND–ARCHIE–AND OTHERS. I AM FORTY- NINE BUT WOMEN STILL TURN IN THE STREET. SOMETIMES.

Zadie Smith, The Waiter's Wife

Obinze saw himself through Vincent’s eyes: a university staff child who grew up eating butter and now needed his help. At first, Vincent affected a British accent, saying “innit” too many times. “This is business, innit, but I’m helping you. You can use my N.I. number and pay me forty per cent of what you make,” Vincent said. “It’s business, innit. If I don’t get what we agree on, I will report you.” “My brother,” Obinze said. “That’s a little too much. You know my situation. I don’t have anything. Please try and come down.” “Thirty-five per cent is the best I can do. This is business.” He lost his accent and now spoke Nigerian English. “Let me tell you, there are many people in your situation.” Iloba spoke in Igbo: “Vincent, my brother here is trying to save money and do his papers. Thirty-five is too much. Please just try and help us.” “You know that some people take half. Yes, he is in a situation, but all of us are in a situation. I am helping him, but this is business.” Vincent’s Igbo had a rural accent. (N 1256)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Checking Out

“. . . You may be right about Samad. ..about many things . . . maybe there are no good men, not even the two in this belly . . . and maybe I do not talk enough with mine, maybe I have married a stranger.. .you might see the truth better than I.. .what do I know, a barefoot country girl who never went to the universities . . .” “Oh, Alsi,” Neena keeps saying, weaving her regret in and out of Alsana’s words like tapestry, feeling bad, “you know I didn’t mean it like that.” “But I cannot be worrying-worrying all the time about the truth. I have to worry about the truth that can be lived with. And that is the difference between losing your marbles drinking the salty sea, or swallowing the stuff from the streams. My Niece-Of-Shame believes in the talking cure, eh?” says Alsana, with something of a grin. “Talk, talk, talk and it will be better. Be honest, slice open your heart and spread the red stuff around. But the past is made of more than words, dearie. We married old men, you see? These bumps,” Alsana pats them both, “they will always have Daddy-long-legs for fathers. One leg in the present, one in the past. No talking will change this. Their roots will always be tangled.” Just as he reaches the far gate, Sol Jozefowicz turns round to wave, and the three women wave back. And Clara feels a little theatrical, flying the park keeper’s cream handkerchief above her head. As if she is seeing someone off on a train journey which crosses the border of two countries. (N 1248)

Zadie Smith, The Waiter's Wife

ENGL passage identification Flashcards

(181 cards)