English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Books

INTRODUCTION. The literature of a people always reflects their character.  You may discover in the prose and poetry of a nation its social condition, and in their different phases its political progress.  The age of Homer was the heroic, in which the Greeks excelled in martial exploits; that of Virgil found the Romans an intellectual and gallant race; the genius of Chaucer, Spencer and Sidney... more...

WITH PIPE AND BOOK. With Pipe and Book at close of day, Oh, what is sweeter, mortal, say? It matters not what book on knee, Old Izaak or the Odyssey, It matters not meerschaum or clay. And though one's eyes will dream astray, And lips forget to sue or sway, It is "enough to merely be," With Pipe and Book. What though our modern skies be gray, As bards aver, I will not pray For... more...

INTRODUCTION The earliest poem in this volume bears the date 1794, when Lamb was nineteen, the latest 1834, the year of his death; so that it covers an even longer period of his life than Vol. I.—the "Miscellaneous Prose." The chronological order which was strictly observed in that volume has been only partly observed in the following pages—since it seemed better to keep the plays together... more...

INTRODUCTION. The spirit of reform which was developed during the early part of the sixteenth century brought about a desire on the part of young men of means to travel on the continent of Europe. This was for the purpose of making themselves acquainted with the politics, social life, literature, art, science, and commerce of the various nations of the same, especially of France, Spain, and Italy.... more...

THE DIARY OF AN OLD SOUL. 1. LORD, what I once had done with youthful might,Had I been from the first true to the truth,Grant me, now old, to do—with better sight,And humbler heart, if not the brain of youth;So wilt thou, in thy gentleness and ruth,Lead back thy old soul, by the path of pain,Round to his best—young eyes and heart and brain. 2. A dim aurora rises in my east,Beyond the line of jagged... more...

ON THE LIFE AND POETIC GENIUS OF EDWARD YOUNG. Between the period of George Herbert, and that of Edward Young, some singular changes had taken place in British poetry as well as in British manners, politics, and religion. There had passed over the land the thunderstorm of the Puritanic Revolt, which had first clouded and then cleared, for a season, the intellectual and moral horizon. The effect of this... more...

INTRODUCTION TO THE OCCASIONAL PIECES (POEMS 1809-1813; POEMS 1814-1816). The Poems afterwards entitled "Occasional Pieces," which were included in the several editions of the Collected Works issued by Murray, 1819-1831, numbered fifty-seven in all. They may be described as the aggregate of the shorter poems written between the years 1809-1818, which the author thought worthy of a permanent... more...

NIELS EBBESEN. All his men the Count collects,   And from Slesvig marched away;Never such as host was seen   Or before or since that day. Into Denmark marched the Count,   Followed by so fair a band;Banners twenty-four they bore,   Power like theirs might none withstand. Gert the Count to Randers rode,   To bad counsel lending ear;For from old it stood foretold,   He should end there his... more...

No species of poetry is more ancient than the lyrical, and yet none shows so little sign of having outlived the requirements of human passion. The world may grow tired of epics and of tragedies, but each generation, as it sees the hawthorns blossom and the freshness of girlhood expand, is seized with a pang which nothing but the spasm of verse will relieve. Each youth imagines that spring-tide and love... more...

THE THINGS THAT MATTER.   NOW that I've nearly done my days,  And grown too stiff to sweep or sew,  I sit and think, till I'm amaze,  About what lots of things I know:  Things as I've found out one by one—  And when I'm fast down in the clay,  My knowing things and how they're done  Will all be lost and thrown away.   There's things, I know, as... more...