"Not far away for ages past had stood
An old inviolated sacred wood;
Whose gloomy boughs, thick interwoven, made
A chilly chearless everlasting shade:
There, nor the rustic gods, nor satyrs sport,
Nor fauns and sylvans with the nymphs resort:
But barbarous priests some dreadful power adore,
And lustrate every tree with human gore.
If mysteries in times of old receiv'd,
And pious ancientry be yet believ'd,
There not the feather'd songster builds her nest,
Nor lonely dens conceal the salvage beast:
There no tempestuous winds presume to fly,
Even lightnings glance aloof, and shoot obliquely by.
No wanton breezes toss the dancing leaves,
But shivering horror in the branches heaves.
Black springs with pitchy streams divide the ground,
And bubbling tumble with a sullen sound.
Old images of forms mishapen stand,
Rude and unknowing of the artist's hand;
With hoary filth begrim'd, each ghastly head
Strikes the astonish'd gazer's soul with dread.
No gods, who long in common shapes appear'd,
Were e'er with such religious awe rever'd:
But zealous crowds in ignorance adore,
And still the less they know, they fear the more."
--Rowe's Lucan, III.591-616
"The young gentlemen were prematurely full of carking anxieties. They knew no rest from the pursuit of stony-hearted verbs, savage noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts of exercises that appeared to them in their dreams. Under the forcing system, a young gentleman usually took leave of his spirits in three weeks. He had all the cares of the world on his head in three months. He conceived bitter senfiments against his parents or guardians in four; he was an old misanthrope, in five; envied Curtius that blessed refuge in the earth, in six; and at the end of the first twelvemonth had arrived at the conclusion, from which he never afterwards departed, that all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of the sages, were a mere collection of words and grammar, and had no other meaning in the world." --Dombey and Son
No comments:
Post a Comment