Frasi di James Macpherson (46 frasi, pagina 2)

James Macpherson: 46 frasi 0 Mi piace

James Macpherson: Frasi in inglese

“Where art thou, beam of light? Hunters, from the mossy rock, saw ye the blue-eyed fair?”

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James Macpherson Temora

Temora, Book VI, p. 353
The Poems of Ossian

“Hail, Carril of other times! Thy voice is like the harp in the halls of Tura.”

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James Macpherson

Book V
The Poems of Ossian, Fingal, an ancient Epic Poem

“Can I forget that beam of light, the white-handed daughter of kings?”

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James Macpherson

"Cath-Loda", Duan I
The Poems of Ossian

“These pieces have been and will, I think, during my life, continue to be to me the sources of daily and exalted pleasures. The tender and the sublime emotions of the mind were never before so wrought up by the human hand. I am not ashamed to own that I think this rude bard of the North the greatest poet that has ever existed. Merely for the pleasure of reading his works, I am become desirous of learning the language in which he sung, and of possessing his songs in their original form.”

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James Macpherson

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles McPherson, February 25, 1773, cited from H. A. Washington (ed.) The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, D.C.: Taylor & Maury, 1853) vol. 1, pp. 195-6.
Criticism

“Sir, a man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.”

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James Macpherson

Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell Life of Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) p. 1207.
Criticism

“Sorrow, like a cloud on the sun, shades the soul of Clessammor.”

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James Macpherson

"Carthon"
The Poems of Ossian

“The gloom of the battle roared.”

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James Macpherson

Book III
The Poems of Ossian, Fingal, an ancient Epic Poem

“Whence is the stream of years? Whither do they roll along? Where have they hid, in mist, their many-coloured sides?
I look into the times of old, but they seem dim to Ossian's eyes, like reflected moon-beams, on a distant lake.”

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James Macpherson

"Cath-Loda", Duan III
The Poems of Ossian

“All hail, Macpherson! hail to thee, Sire of Ossian! The Phantom was begotten by the suing embrace of all impudent Highlander upon a cloud of tradition—it travelled southward, where it was greeted with acclamation, and the thin Consistence took its course through Europe, upon the breath of popular applause. […] Having had the good fortune to be born and reared in a mountainous country, from my very childhood I have felt the falsehood that pervades the volumes imposed upon the world under the name of Ossian. From what I saw with my own eyes, I knew that the imagery was spurious. In Nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute independent singleness. In Macpherson's work, it is exactly the reverse; every thing (that is not stolen) is in this manner defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened,—yet nothing distinct. It will always be so when words are substituted for things. […] Yet, much as those pretended treasures of antiquity have been admired, they have been wholly uninfluential upon the literature of the Country. No succeeding writer appears to have taught from them a ray of inspiration; no author, in the least distinguished, has ventured formally to imitate them—except the boy, Chatterton, on their first appearance. […] This incapacity to amalgamate with the literature of the Island, is, in my estimation, a decisive proof that the book is essentially unnatural; nor should I require any other to demonstrate it to be a forgery, audacious as worthless.”

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James Macpherson

William Wordsworth, "Essay Supplementary to the Preface" http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/TextRecord.php?textsid=35963 in Poems by William Wordsworth, Vol. I (1815), pp. 363–365.
Criticism

“The music was like the memory of joys that are past, pleasant and mournful to the soul.”

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James Macpherson

"The Death of Cuthullin"
The Poems of Ossian

“Pleasant are the words of the song," said Cuthullin, "and lovely are the tales of other times. They are like the calm dew of the morning on the hill of roes, when the sun is faint on its side, and the lake is settled and blue in the vale.”

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James Macpherson

Book III
The Poems of Ossian, Fingal, an ancient Epic Poem

“I look down from my height on nations
And they become ashes before me.”

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James Macpherson

"Carric", quoted in Thoreau, "Life Without Principle"
The Poems of Ossian

“The people bend before me. I turn the battle in the field of the brave. I look on the nations, and they vanish: my nostrils pour the blast of death. I come abroad on the winds: the tempests are before my face. But my dwelling is calm, above the clouds; the fields of my rest are pleasant.”

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James Macpherson

"Carric-thura", p. 147
The Poems of Ossian

“We may boldly assign him [Ossian] a place among those, whose works are to last for ages.”

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James Macpherson

Hugh Blair, A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian (1763), p. 75.
Criticism

“That Fingal is not from beginning to end a translation from the Gallick, but that some passages have been supplied by the editor to connect the whole, I have heard admitted by very warm advocates for its authenticity. If this be the case, why are not these distinctly ascertained? Antiquaries, and admirers of the work, may complain, that they are in a situation similar to that of the unhappy gentleman whose wife informed him, on her death-bed, that one of their reputed children was not his; and, when he eagerly begged her to declare which of them it was, she answered, That you shall never know', and expired, leaving him in irremediable doubt as to them all.”

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James Macpherson

James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), p. 490.
Criticism

“Whither hast thou fled, O wind?”

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James Macpherson

said the king of Morven. "Dost thou rustle in the chambers of the south? pursuest thou the shower in other lands? Why dost thou not come to my sails? to the blue face of my seas?"
"Lathmon"
The Poems of Ossian