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A Little Earnest Book Upon a Great Old Subject
A Little Earnest Book Upon a Great Old Subject Author:William Wilson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. By oppression's woes and pains ! By our Soiib in servile chains 1 We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free! Buna. HISTORICAL... more » POSITIONS—THE POET THE ADVOCATE OF FREEDOM—TOWN AND COUNTRY LIFE—A SPRING SONG —SOLITUDE—THE MEMORIES AND FEELINGS OF CHILDHOOD EXISTENCE AT TIMES ALMOST HOPELESS—TWILIGHT MUSINGS WITH NATURE, A POEM —THE POEl'S GREATEST LOVE. SFTEN, when reading the records of the past, or the chronicles of our own suggestive and eventful times, we have fancied, that the great historical positions, of which ancient and modern days alike present us with examples, are curiously worthy of careful consideration. We can fancy, that in such moments the spirit must receive into itself, a sustaining foretaste of the glorious immortalitywhich it is nobly earning ; and which, with the human influence and importance of the cause in which it is embarked, acts upon it as an upholding power. If the great spirit—and a spirit to be great must be poetical—is once entirely convinced of the justice and right of a cause, death ceases to have, from that instant, an aspect of terror, and becomes a glorious transition. The true Poet, is ever the advocate of Freedom; he is ranged on the side of those who aspire after the greatest amount of liberty. He who enjoys such perfect freedom of soul, knows well how to estimate the blessings of national freedom. Many in old Rome and Greece—Shakspere and Milton,1 and Byron and Shelley in our own time—in fact, all great men with freeand pure souls, are seekers after civil and religious liberty. They base their politics upon eternal principles, as the ancients did upon the conceived spirit of their gods. Of old did they exclaim— 1 Milton was the most powerful and liberal political writer of his day; and so liber...« less