Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/398

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Twelve Hundred Years of English.
369

Wouldst thou live if thou mightst in this fair worlds O Pharamond?
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Yea, if she and truth were; nay, if she and truth were not,
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O long shalt thou live; thou art here in the body,
Where nought but thy spirit I brought in days bygone.
Ah, thou hearkenest! — And where then of old hast thou heard it?
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O mock me not, Death; or, Life, hold me no longer;
For that sweet strain I hear that I heard once a-dreaming;
Is it death coming nigher, or life coming back that brings it?
Or rather my dream come again as aforetime?
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Look up, O Pharamond! canst thou see aught about thee? — Page 76.


It is a shame for any Englishman to look coldly upon his mother tongue, and I hope that this Book may help forward the study of English in all its stages. Let the beginner first buy the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon Gospels, with Wickliffe's and Tyndale's versions; these, printed in four columns side by side, make a moderate volume, and are published by J. Smith, Soho Square, Lon­don. Let him next get Thorpe's Analecta Anglo-Saxonica (a glossary is attached), published by Arch, Cornhill; the extracts given here range from the year 890 to 1205. Then let him go on to Dr. Morris' Specimens of Early English, which will take him from 1230 to 1400; Mr. Skeat's Specimens will bring him down to 1579: these last two books come from the Clarendon Press and are sold by Macmillan & Co. The great English works, from 1579 to 1873, maybe supposed to be already well known to all