Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
It has been well said that the essence of the lyric is to describe the passion of the moment. Burns is a master in this field. The spirit of revolution against the bondage and cold formalism of the past made the poor man feel that his place in the world was as dignified, his happiness as important, as that of the rich.
The people were to be freed from the bondage of sin, of meaningless formalism, of consecrated hypocrisy, a bondage more degrading than the payment of tribute to the emperor. The true business of the Messiah, then, was to deliver his people from the former bondage; it might be left to Jehovah, in his own good time, to deliver them from the latter.
In this, despite its beauty, there is still a soupcon of formalism, a lingering trace of powder from the eighteenth century periwig, dimming the bright locks of poetry. Only the literary student reads that little masterpiece, the Ode to Evening, which sometimes heralds the Shelleian strain, while other passages are the sole things in the language comparable to the miniatures of Il Penseroso.
Fryar-Gunnetts were innumerable, threatening to become a majority; as they will constantly do while the sisterhood of the chaste are wattled in formalism and throned in sourness. Thoughts of Diana made phantoms of the reputable and their reverse alike. He could not choose but think of her. She was free; and he too; and they were as distant as the horizon sail and the aft-floating castaway.
In that general "fit of compunction," which we are told seized all Italy at this time, the passionate devotion for the benign Madonna mingled the poetry of pity with that of pain; and assuredly this state of feeling, with its mental and moral requirements, must have assisted in emancipating art from the rigid formalism of the degenerate Greek school.
Penn's championship of George Manners had led her to discover more formalism in his piety, and northern broadness in his accent, than before. But these quiet services were my daily comfort in those troublous days; and in the sweet fresh walk home across the park, my more than father and I hatched endless conspiracies on George's behalf between the church porch and the rectory gate.
Their frost is broken by no thaw, their tepid formalism interrupted by no disturbing enthusiasm. We do not now speak of these, but of those who have moments of illumination, of communion, of submission of will, which fade all too soon. To such we would earnestly say that these moments may be prolonged and made more continuous. We need not be at the mercy of our own unregulated feelings.
Lord John Russell proposes further relief upon the matter of oaths to be taken by members of Parliament. Mr. Gladstone said that the civil political claims of the Jew should not be barred, and he deprecated the tendency to degenerate formalism in oaths, but he was glad that the words, "on the true faith of a Christian" in respect to all Christian members of the House of Commons had been retained.
Ignorant critics call the spirit thus engendered 'professional conservatism'; the fact being that change is not objected to is even welcomed, however frequent it may be, provided only that it is suggested from inside. An immediate result is 'unreality and formalism of peace training' to quote a recent thoughtful military critic.
Some worthy fellows resemble him, and they are called deep-hearted. He was dungeon-deep. The prisoner underneath might clamour and leap; none heard him or knew of him; nor did he ever view the day. Diana's frank: 'Ah, Mr. Redworth, how glad I am to see you! was met by the calmest formalism of the wish for her happiness.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking