Public Domain

The Mirror of the SeaA Departure is not what a vain people of landsmen may think. The term Landfall is more easily understood; you fall in with the land, and it is a matter of a quick eye and of a clear atmosphere. The...

Poems, with The Ballad of Reading GaolThis collection of Wildes Poems contains the volume of 1881 in its entirety, The Sphinx, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and Ravenna. Of the Uncollected Poems published in the Uniform Edition of 1908, a few, including the Translations...

Martin Eden Let me live out my years in heat of blood! Let me lie drunken with the dreamers wine! Let me not see this soul-house built of mud Go toppling to the dust a vacant shrine! The one opened the door with a...

'Twixt Land & Sea: TalesEver since the sun rose I had been looking ahead. The ship glided gently in smooth water. After a sixty days passage I was anxious to make my landfall, a fertile and beautiful island of the tropics. The more enthusiastic...

A Collection of BalladsWhen the learned first gave serious attention to popular ballads, from the time of Percy to that of Scott, they laboured under certain disabilities. The Comparative Method was scarcely understood, and was little practised. Editors were content to study the ballads...

Within the Tides: TalesIn the private editorial office of the principal newspaper in a great colonial city two men were talking. They were both young. The stouter of the two, fair, and with more of an urban look about him, was the editor and...

Step by Step; Or, Tidy's Way to Freedom MY DEAR CHILDREN,All of you who read this little book have doubtless heard more or less of slavery. You know it is the system by which a portion of our people hold their fellow-creatures as property,...

Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times...

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets I had better explain why, in this little piece d'occasion, written for a performance in aid of the funds of the project for establishing a National Theatre as a memorial to Shakespear, I have identified the Dark Lady...

Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman I have written this story of my army life at the urgent and ceaseless request of my children. For whenever I allude to those early days, and tell to them the tales...

The Ruling Passion: Tales of Nature and Human Nature In every life worth writing about there is a ruling passion,the very pulse of the machine. Unless you touch that, you are groping around outside of reality. Sometimes it is romantic love: Natures masterpiece of...

The New Machiavelli Since I came to this place I have been very restless, wasting my energies in the futile beginning of ill-conceived books. One does not settle down very readily at two and forty to a new way of living, and I have...

God, the Invisible King This book sets out as forcibly and exactly as possible the religious belief of the writer. That belief is not orthodox Christianity; it is not, indeed, Christianity at all; its core nevertheless is a profound belief in a personal and...

Venus and Adonis Right Honourable, I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burthen: only, if your honour seem...

Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to HeavenWell, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a little anxious. Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that time, like a comet. Like a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the...

The Story of Evolution An ingenious student of science once entertained his generation with a theory of how one might behold again all the stirring chapters that make up the story of the earth. The living scene of our time is lit by the...

A Reading of Life, with Other PoemsThrough the water-eye of night, Midway between eve and dawn, See the chase, the rout, the flight In deep forest; oread, faun, Goat-foot, antlers laid on neck; Ravenous all the line for speed. See yon wavy sparkle beck...

Shakespeare's Sonnets From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beautys rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feedst thy lights flame with self-substantial...

The Three Taverns: A Book of Poems The Valley of the Shadow The Wandering Jew Neighbors The Mill The Dark Hills The Three Taverns Demos I Demos II The Flying Dutchman Tact On the Way John Brown The False Gods Archibald's Example London Bridge...

Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa Personal SketchHighland AncestorsFamily TraditionsGrandfather removes to the LowlandsParentsEarly Labors and Efforts Evening SchoolLove of ReadingReligious ImpressionsMedical EducationYouthful TravelsGeologyMental DisciplineStudy in GlasgowLondon Missionary SocietyNative VillageMedical DiplomaTheological StudiesDeparture for AfricaNo Claim to Literary Accomplishments. My own inclination would lead...