What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art and poetry, in all its periods from the Heroic... and Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The moon shines bright. In such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,... And they did make no noise, in such a night Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls, And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents, Where Cressid lay that night.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend?... Since every one hath, every one, one shade, And you, but one, can every shadow lend. Describe Adonis, and the counterfiet Is poorly imitated after you; On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set, And you in Grecian tires are painted new; Speak of the spring and foison of the year, The one doth shadow of your beauty show, The other as your bounty doth appear; And you in every blessed shape we know. In all external grace you have some part, But you like none, none you, for constant heart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
here in hell We're drinking tea from a Grecian Urn long after... Your Paphian Fanny let tubercles quell Ethereal passion: I know it by your laughter!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the wall...s of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield any sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is ever sounding ...and resounding in the ears of men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divi...ne race.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal t...int, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his serv...ice, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them,--transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half smothered between two musty leaves in a library,--aye, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature. I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this yearning for the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is tame. I do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, any account which contents me of that Nature with which even I am acquainted. You will perceive that I demand something which no Augustan nor Elizabethan age, which no culture, in short, can give. Mythology comes nearer it than anything. How much more fertile a Nature, at least, has Grecian mythology its root in than English literature! Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight; and which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated. All other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our houses; but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western Isles, as old as mankind, and, whether that does or not, will endure as long; for the decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »