Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems

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Sam'l Colman, 1837 - Booksellers and bookselling - 264 pages
 

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Page 41 - The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd, Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.
Page 72 - Chaos heard the potent word; Through all his realms the kindling ether runs, And the mass starts into a million suns; Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst, And second planets issue from the first; Bend as they journey with projectile force, In bright ellipses their reluctant course; Orbs wheel in orbs, round centres centres roll, And form self-balanced one revolving whole. Onward they move amid their bright abode, Space without bound, the Bosom of their God...
Page 65 - ... the turning of the new-formed globe upon its axis, and the greatest diameter of the shell would be in its equator. If. by any accident afterwards the axis should be changed...
Page 65 - ... all matters lighter than the central parts of that air, and immersed in it, would recede from the centre, and rise till they arrived at that region of the air which was of the same specific gravity with themselves, where they would rest ; while other matter, mixed with the lighter air, would descend, and the two meeting would form the shell of the first earth, leaving the upper atmosphere nearly clear.
Page 158 - This body of men in our own country may be described like the British army in Caesar's time : some of them slay in chariots, and some on foot. If the infantry do less execution than the charioteers, it is because they cannot be carried so soon into all quarters of the town, and despatch so much business in so short a time.
Page 216 - O what cruel deceits will sin land us in ! and how artfully it pleads for a " little more sleep, and a little more slumber; a little more folding of the hands to sleep.
Page 46 - Some say, he bid his angels turn askance The poles of earth, twice ten degrees and more, From the sun's axle ; they with labour push'd Oblique the centric globe.
Page 64 - If one might indulge imagination in supposing how such a globe was formed, I should conceive, that all the elements in separate particles, being originally mixed in confusion, and occupying a great space, they would (as soon as...
Page 63 - Such changes in the superficial parts of the globe, seemed to me unlikely to happen, if the earth were solid to the centre. I therefore imagined that the internal parts might be a fluid more dense, and of greater specific gravity than any of the solids we are acquainted with ; which therefore might swim in or upon that fluid. Thus the surface of the globe would be a shell, capable of being broken and disordered by the violent movements of the fluid on which it rested.
Page 84 - In the subsequent part of the process, the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs set in motion. It appeared to the uninformed part of the bystanders as if the wretched man was on the eve of being restored to life. This, however, was impossible, as several of his friends who were under the scaffold had violently pulled his legs, in order to put a more speedy termination to his sufferings.

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