SCAN BY AK3D FOR #BOOKZ / EBOOKS / FREEBOOKZ – UNDERNET
FOR – Joanne, Moondawgy
SELECTIONS
FOR
PARAPHRASING
SELECTED BY
W. MURISON, M.A.
SENIOR ENGLISH MASTER IN ABERDEEN GRAMMAR SCHOOL
LONDON
BLACKIE & SON, Limited, 50 OLD BAILEY, E.C. GLASGOW AND DUBLIN 1896
PREFATORY NOTE.
The extracts in this collection have, for the most part, been tested in class-work. The standard of paraphrasing aimed at is that of the English papers in the Leaving Certificate and the University Preliminary Examinations.
Though the arrangement is not strictly according to difficulty, the first thirty will be found considerably easier than the last thirty. The others lie, in difficulty as in position, between these extremes.
In a few cases I have taken the liberty of modernizing the spelling. Occasionally, also, lines have been omitted.
W. M.
January, 1896.
3. QUEEN MARY'S ARRIVAL IN SCOTLAND. 5
5 EVENING IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. 6
7. BANNOCKBURN: THE HEAT OF BATTLE. 7
8. MORNING IN THE TROSSACHS. 7
9. SUNSET IN A HIGHLAND GLEN. 8
19. PARIS FLEES FROM KING MENELAUS. 12
23. THE VILLAGE PREACHER.—I. 14
24. THE VILLAGE PREACHER—II. 15
25. THE VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTER. 15
29. THE COLISEUM BY MOONLIGHT. 17
40. THE POET DESPAIRS OF HIS COUNTRY. 23
42. EVEN IN LAUGHTER THE HEART IS SORROWFUL. 24
45. THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY. 25
56. THE SEASONS OF MAN'S MIND, 30
62. THE LAND OF INDOLENCE.—I. 32
63. THE LAND OF INDOLENCE.—II. 33
64. THE SLEEP OF THE INDOLENT. 33
67. THE ATTENDANT SPIRIT SPEAKS. 34
73. CARDINAL WOLSEY'S RISE AND FALL. 37
74. WOLSEY ADVISES CROMWELL. 38
87. FUGIT IRREPARABILE TEMPUS. 43
94. SONNET TO THE NIGHTINGALE. 46
98. THE PLEASURE OF VICISSITUDE. 48
100. MAKE A VIRTUE OF NECESSITY. 49
101. POLONIUS' ADVICE TO HIS SON. 50
103. A ROMAN EMPEROR'S WISH. 51
110. THE FUTURE BEST UNKNOWN. 54
112. CALL TO THE GREEKS TO RISE AGAINST THE TURKS. 54
114. ON THE SUBJUGATION OF SWITZERLAND. 55
117. SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI. 57
119. SATAN ADDRESSES HIS NEW ABODE. 57
121. SATAN UNSUBDUED IN MIND. 58
124. THE DUKE PRAISES HIS LIFE IN EXILE. 60
127. CARDINAL WOLSEY SPEAKS. 61
129. MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNIUS. 62
130. THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM. 62
131. PRINCE HENRY EXPLAINS HIS FRIVOLITY. 63
132. HENRY APOSTROPHISES SLEEP. 63
133. TIBERIUS ON THE TRUE GLORY OF A PRINCE. 64
134. EDWARD II. ON HIS WRONGS. 65
135. METHODS OF GOVERNMENT. 65
144. WHAT COMES AFTER DEATH? 69
145. CATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 70
148. SONNET ON HIS HAVING ARRIVED AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE. 72
149. SAMSON, VISITED IN PRISON, SPEAKS:— 72
SELECTIONS FOR PARAPHRASING.
A nimble squirrel from the wood,
Banging the hedges for his filbert-food,
Sits pertly on a bough his brown nuts cracking
And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking,
Till with their crooks and bags a sort of boys,
To share with him, come with so great a noise
That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke
And for his life leap to a neighbour oak,
Thence to a beech, thence to a row of ashes;
Whilst through the quagmires and red water plashes
The boys run dabbling thorough thick and thin
One tears his hose, another breaks his shin;
This, torn and tattered, hath with much ado
Got by the briars; and that hath lost his shoe ;
This drops his band ; that headlong falls for haste;
Another cries behind for being last:
With sticks and stones and many a sounding hollowl
The little fool with no small sport they follow,
Whilst he from tree to tree, from spray to spray,
Gets to the wood and hides him in his dray2.
—W. Browne, Britannia's Pastorals.
1 holloa. 2 nest
Down by yon hazel copse at evening blazed
The gipsy's faggot—there we stood and gazed;
Gazed on her sunburnt face with silent awe,
Her tattered mantle and her hood of straw;
Her moving lips, her caldron brimming o'er;
The drowsy brood that on her back she bore,
Imps in the barn with mousing owlets bred,
From rifled roost at nightly revel fed;
Whose dark eyes flashed through locks of blackest shade,
When in the breeze the distant watch-dog bayed;
And heroes fled the sibyl's muttered call,
Whose elfin prowess scaled the orchard wall.
As o'er my palm the silver piece she drew
And traced the line of life with searching view,
How throbbed my fluttering pulse with hopes and fears
To learn the colour of my future years!
—ROGERS, Pleasures of Memory,
3. QUEEN MARY'S ARRIVAL IN SCOTLAND.
Light on her airy steed she sprung,
Around with golden tassels hung,
No chieftain there rode half so free
Or half so light and gracefully.
How sweet to see her ringlets pale
Wild waving in the southland gale,
Which through the broomwood blossoms flew
To fan her cheeks of rosy hue;
And when her courser's mane it swung,
A thousand silver bells ware rung.
A sight so fair on Scottish plain
A Scot shall never see again.
When Mary turned her wondering eyes
To rocks that seemed to prop the skies,
On palace, park, and battled pile,
On lake and river, sea and isle,
O'er woods and meadows bathed in dew,
To distant mountains wild and blue,
She thought the isle that gave her birth
The sweetest, wildest land on earth.
—Hogg, The Queen's Wake.
Oft in the lone churchyard at night I've seen,
By glimpse of moonlight chequering through the trees,
A schoolboy with his satchel in his hand,
Whistling aloud to bear his courage up
And lightly tripping o'er the long, flat stones—
With nettles skirted and with moss o'ergrown—
That tell in homely phrase who lies below.
Sudden he starts! and hears, or thinks he hears,
The sound of something purring at his heels;
Full fast he flies and dares not look behind him
Till out of breath he overtakes his fellows;
Who gather round and wonder at the tale
Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly,
That walks at dead of night or takes his stand
O'er some new-opened grave, and, strange to tell,
Evanishes at crowing of the cock.
—Blair, The Grave.
5 EVENING IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds :
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.
—Gray, Elegy.
The English shafts in volleys hailed,
In headlong charge their horse assailed ;
Front, flank and rear, the squadrons sweep
To break the Scottish circle deep
That fought around their king.
But yet, though thick the shafts as snow,
Though charging knights like whirlwinds go,
Though bill-men ply the ghastly blow,
Unbroken was the ring;
The stubborn spearmen still made good
Their dark impenetrable wood,
Each stepping where his comrade stood,
The instant that he fell.
No thought was there of dastard flight;
Linked in the serried phalanx tight,
Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,
As fearlessly and well;
Till utter darkness closed her wing
O'er their thin host and wounded king.
—Scott, Marmion.
7. BANNOCKBURN: THE HEAT OF BATTLE.
Unflinching foot 'gainst foot was set,
Unceasing blow by blow was met;
The groans of those who fell
Were drowned amid the shriller clang
That from the blades and harness rang,
And in the battle-yell.
Yet fast they fell, unheard, forgot,
Both Southern fierce and hardy Scot;
And O! amid that waste of life
What various motives fired the strife !
The aspiring Noble bled for fame,
The Patriot for his country's claim;
This Knight his youthful strength to prove,
And that to win his lady's love;
Some fought from ruffian thirst of blood,
From habit some, or hardihood.
But ruffian stern and soldier good,
The noble and the slave,
From various cause the same wild road,
On the same bloody morning, trode
To that dark inn, the grave.
—Scott, Lord of the Isles.
The summer dawn's reflected hue
To purple changed Loch Katrine blue;
Mildly and soft the western breeze
Just kissed the lake, just stirred the trees;
And the pleased lake, like maiden coy,
Trembled but dimpled not for joy;
The mountain shadows on her breast
Were neither broken nor at rest;
In bright uncertainty they lie,
Like future joys to Fancy's eye.
The water-lily to the light
Her chalice reared of silver bright;
Invisible in flecked sky
The lark sent down her revelry ;
The blackbird and the speckled thrush
Good-morrow gave from brake and bush ;
In answer cooed the cushat dove
Her notes of peace and rest and love.
—Scott, Lady of the Lake.
The western waves of ebbing day
Rolled o'er the glen their level way;
Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire.
But not a setting beam could glow
Within the dark ravines below,
Where twined the path, in shadow hid,
Round many a rocky pyramid
Shooting abruptly from the dell
Its thunder-splintered pinnacle;
Round many an insulated mass,
The native bulwarks of the pass,
Huge as the tower which builders vain
Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain.
The rocky summits, split and rent,
Formed turret, dome or battlement,
Or seemed fantastically set
With cupola or minaret,
Wild crests as pagod ever decked
Or mosque of Eastern architect.
Nor were these earth-born castles bare
Nor lacked they many a banner fair;
For, from their shivered brows displayed,
Far o'er the unfathomable glade,
All twinkling with the dewdrop sheen,
The brier-rose fell in streamers green,
And creeping shrubs of thousand dyes
Waved in the west-wind's summer sighs.
—Scott, Lady of the Lake.
The sun, awakening, through the smoky air
Of the dark city casts a sullen glance,
Rousing each caitiff to his task of care—
Of sinful man the sad inheritance;
Summoning revellers from the lagging dance,
Scaring the prowling robber to his den,
Gilding on battled tower the warder's lance,
And warning student pale to leave his pen
And yield his drowsy eyes to the kind nurse of men.
What various scenes, and O! what scenes of woe,
Are witnessed by that red and struggling beam!
The fevered patient, from his pallet low,
Through crowded hospital beholds its stream;
The debtor wakes to thought of gyve and jail;
The wakeful mother, by the glimmering pale,
Trims her sick infant's couch and soothes his feeble wail.
—Scott, Lady of the Lake.
The troops exulting sat in order round
And beaming fires illumined all the ground.
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's pure azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene,
Around her throne the vivid planets roll
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole,
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed
And tip with silver every mountain's head :
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies:
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault and bless the useful light.
—Pope, Iliad.
Hark! 'tis the twanging horn ! O'er yonder bridge,
That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright,
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spattered boots, strapped waist and frozen locks,
News from all nations lumbering at his back.
True to his charge, the close-packed load behind,
Yet careless what he brings, his one concern
Is to conduct it to the destined inn,
And, having dropped the expected bag, pass on.
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch,
Cold and yet cheerful: messenger of grief
Perhaps to thousands and of joy to some,
To him indifferent whether grief or joy.
—COWPER, The Task.
Sometimes too a burst of rain,
Swept from the black horizon, broad descends
In one continuous flood. Still over head
The mingling tempest weaves its gloom and still
The deluge deepens; till the fields around
Lie sunk and flatted in the sordid wave.
Sudden the ditches swell; the meadows swim.
Red from the hills innumerable streams
Tumultuous roar, and high above its bank
The river lift, before whose rushing tide
Herds, flocks and harvests, cottages and swains
Roll mingled down : all that the winds had spared
In one wild moment ruined—the big hopes
And well-earned treasures of the painful year.
Fled to some eminence, the husbandman
Helpless beholds the miserable wreck
Driving along; his drowning ox at once
Descending, with his labours scattered round,
He sees; and instant o'er his shivering thought
Comes winter unprovided and a train Of clamant children dear.
—Thomson, Seasons.
Defeating oft the labours of the year,
The sultry south collects a potent blast.
At first the groves are scarcely seen to stir
Their trembling tops, and a still murmur runs;
Along the soft-inclining fields of corn;
But, as the aerial tempest fuller swells,
And in one mighty stream, invisible,
Immense, the whole excited atmosphere
Impetuous rushes o'er the sounding world,
Strained to the root, the stooping forest pours
A rustling shower of yet untimely leaves.
High-beat, the circling mountains eddy in
From the bare wild the dissipated storm,
And send it in a torrent down the vale;
Exposed, and naked to its utmost rage,
Though all the sea of hardest, rolling round
The billowy plain, floats wide, nor can evade,
Though pliant to the blast, its seizing force;
Or whirled in air, or into vacant chaff
Shook Waste.
—Thomson, Seasons.
Or rushing thence, in one diffusive band,
They drive the troubled flocks, by many a dog
Compelled, to where the mazy-running brook
Forms a deep pool; this bank abrupt and high,
And that fair-spreading in a pebbled shore.
Urged to the giddy brink, much is the toil,
The clamour much, of men and boys and dogs,
Ere the soft fearful people to the flood
Commit their woolly sides. And oft the swain,
On some impatient seizing, hurls them in :
Emboldened then, nor hesitating more,
Fast, fast they plunge amid the flashing wave,
And panting, labour to the farthest shore.
Repeated this, till deep the well-washed fleece
Has drunk the flood, and from his lively haunt
The trout is banished by the sordid stream.
Heavy and dripping, to the breezy brow
Slow move the harmless race.
—Thomson, Seasons.
Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,
At first thin wavering; till at last the flakes
Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the day
With a continual flow. The cherished fields
Put on their winter-robe of purest white.
'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low, the woods
Bow their hoar head; and, ere the languid sun
Faint from the west emits his evening ray,
Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,
Is one wild dazzling waste that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox
Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil.
—Thomson, Winter.
The fowls of heaven,
Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half-afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance,
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is;
Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs Attract his slender feet.
—Thomson, Winter.
We climbed the beach, and springs of water found;
Then, spread our hasty banquet on the ground.
Three men were sent, deputed from the crew,
(A herald one), the dubious coast to view,
And learn what habitants possessed the place.
They went, and found a hospitable race,
Not prone to ill, nor strange to foreign guest.
They eat, they drink, and nature gives the feast:
The trees around them all their food produce;
Lotus the name—divine, nectareous juice!
(Thence called Lotophagi), which, whoso tastes,
Insatiate riots in the sweet repasts,
Nor other home nor other care intends,
But quits his house, his country and his friends.
The three, we sent, from off the enchanting ground
We dragged reluctant, and by force we bound :
The rest in haste forsook the pleasing shore,
Or, the charm tasted, had returned no more.
—Pope, Odyssey.
19. PARIS FLEES FROM KING MENELAUS.
As thus, with glorious air and proud disdain,
He boldly stalked, the foremost on the plain,
Him Menelaus, loved of Mars, espies
With heart elated, and with joyful eyes:
So joys a lion, if the branching deer,
Or mountain goat, his bulky prize, appear;
Eager he seizes and devours the slain,
Pressed by bold youths and baying dogs in vain.
Thus fond of vengeance, with a furious bound,
In clanging arms he leaps upon the ground
From his high chariot: him, approaching near,
The beauteous champion views with marks of fear,
Smit with a conscious sense, retires behind,
And shuns the fate he well deserved to find.
As when some shepherd, from the rustling trees
Shot forth to view a scaly serpent sees,
Trembling and pale he starts with wild affright,
And, all confused, precipitates his flight:
So from the king the shining warrior flies,
And plunged amid the thickest Trojans lies.
—Pope, Iliad.
Still at the closest ranks, the thickest fight,
He points his ardour, and exerts his might.
The Grecian phalanx, moveless as a tower,
On all sides battered, yet resists his power:
So some tall rock o'erhangs the hoary main,
By winds assailed, by billows beat in vain,
Unmoved it hears, above, the tempest blow,
And sees the watery mountains break below.
Girt in surrounding flames, he seems to fall
Like fire from Jove and bursts upon them all;
Bursts as a wave that from the cloud impends,
And swelled with tempests on the ship descends:
White are the decks with foam; the winds aloud
Howl o'er the masts, and sing through every shroud:
Pale, trembling, tired, the sailors freeze with fears,
And instant death on every wave appears.
So pale the Greeks the eyes of Hector meet;
The chief so thunders, and so shakes the fleet.
—Pope, Iliad.
I see before me the gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand—his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low,
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him; he is gone
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.
He heard it, but he heeded not—his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother—he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday.
—Byron, Childe Harold.
A lovely Lady rode him fair beside
Upon a lowly ass more white than snow,
Yet she much whiter; but the same did hide
Under a veil that wimpled was full low;
And over all a black stole she did throw:
As one that inly mourned, so was she sad
And heavy sat upon her palfrey slow;
Seemed, in heart some hidden care she had,
And by her, in a line, a milk-white lamb she led:
So pure and innocent as that same lamb,
She was in life and every virtuous lore;
And by descent from royal lineage came
Of ancient kings and queens, that had of yore
Their sceptres stretched from east to western shore,
And all the world in their subjection held.
Spenser, Fairy Queen.
Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled
And still where many a garden flower grows wild—
There where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.
A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich with forty pounds a year;
Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place;
Unpractised he to fawn or seek for power
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More skilled to raise the wretched, than to rise.
His house was known to all the vagrant train;
He chid their wanderings but relieved their pain:
The long remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard, descending, swept his aged breast;
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud,
Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed ;
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,
Sat by his fire and talked the night away,
Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done,
Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow;
And quite forgot their vices in their woe;
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began.
—Goldsmith, Deserted Village.
At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorned the venerable place;
Truth, from his lips, prevailed with double sway,
And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.
The service past, around the pious man
With steady zeal each honest rustic ran ;
Even children followed with endearing wife,
And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile.
His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed;
Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed:
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven:
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm;
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.
—Goldsmith, Deserted Village.
Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way,
With blossomed furze unprofitably gay,
There in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule,
The village master taught his little school.
A man severe he was, and stern to view —
I knew him well and every truant knew:
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the busy whisper, circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings, when he frowned.
Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault;
The village all declared how much he knew:
'T was certain he could write and cipher too;
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,
And even the story ran that he could gauge:
In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill,
For, even though vanquished, he could argue still;
While words of learned length and thundering sound
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.
—Goldsmith, Deserted Village.
Oh, War! them hast thy fierce delight,
Thy gleams of joy, intensely bright!
Such gleams as from thy polished shield
Fly dazzling o'er the battle-field.
Such transports wake, severe and high,
Amid the pealing conquest-cry;
Scarce less, when, after battle lost,
Muster the remnants of a host;
And, as each comrade's name they tell,
Who in the well-fought conflict fell,
Knitting stern brow o'er flashing eye,
Vow to avenge them or to die !
—Scott, Lord, of the Isles.
There are who have at midnight hour
In slumber scaled a dizzy tower,
And on the verge, that beetled o'er
The ocean-tide's incessant roar,
Dreamed calmly out their dangerous dream,
Till wakened by the morning beam;
When, dazzled by the eastern glow,
Such startler cast his glance below,
And saw unmeasured depth around,
And heard unintermitted sound,
And thought the battled fence so frail
It waved like cobweb in the gale—
Amid his senses' giddy wheel,
Did he not desperate impulse feel
Headlong to plunge himself below,
And meet the worst his fears foreshow?
—Scott, Lady of the Lake.
The favouring moon arose,
To guide them on their flight through upland paths
Remote from frequentage, and dales retired,
Forest and mountain glen. Before their feet,
The fire-flies, swarming in the woodland shade,
Sprung up like sparks, and twinkled round their way;
The timorous blackbird, starting at their step,
Fled from the thicket, with shrill note of fear;
And far below them in the peopled dell,
When all the soothing sounds of eve had ceased,
The distant watch-dog's voice at times was heard
Answering the nearer wolf. All through the night,
Among the hills they travelled silently;
Till, when the stars were setting, at what hour
The breath of heaven is coldest, they beheld
Within a lonely grove the expected fire,
Where Roderick and his comrade anxiously
Looked for the appointed meeting.
—SOUTHEY, Roderick.
29. THE COLISEUM BY MOONLIGHT.
The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains.
When I was wandering,—upon such a night
I stood within the Coliseum's wall,
'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees, which grew along the broken arches,
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar .
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near, from out the Caesars' palace, came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses, beyond the time-worn breach,
Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bowshot. Where the Caesars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst
A grove which springs through levelled battlements,
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths,
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth ;
But the gladiator's bloody Circus stands,
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection,
While Caesar's chambers, and the Augustan halls,
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.
—Byron, Manfred.
Thick lay the dust, uncomfortably white,
In glaring mimicry of Arab sand.
The woods and mountains slept in hazy light;
The meadows looked athirst and tawny tanned;
The little rills had left their channels bare,
With scarce a pool to witness what they were;
And the shrunk river gleamed mid oozy stones
That stared like any famished giant's bones.
Sudden the hills grew black, and hot as stove
The air beneath; it was a toil to be.
There was a growling as of angry Jove
Provoked by Juno's prying jealousy:
A flash—a crash—the firmament was split,
And down it came in drops—the smallest fit
To drown a bee in fox-glove bell concealed:
Joy filled the brook, and comfort cheered the field.
—Hartley Coleridge.
I see a column of slow-rising smoke
O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild.
A vagabond and useless tribe there eat
Their miserable meal. A kettle, slung
Between two poles upon a stick transverse,
Receives the morsel—flesh obscene of dog,
Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined
From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race !
They pick their fuel out of every hedge,
Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unquenched
The spark of life, The sportive wind blows wide
Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin,
The vellum of the pedigree they claim.
Great skill have they in palmistry, and more
To conjure clean away the gold they touch,
Conveying worthless dross into its place ;
Loud when they beg, dumb only when they steal.
—Cowper, The Task.
Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more! My ear is pained,
My soul is sick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart;
It does not feel for man: the natural bond
Of brotherhood is severed, as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not coloured like his own; and, having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause,
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplored,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes that Mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps, when she sees inflicted on a beast.
—COWPER, The Task.
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still,
My country! and while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrained to love thee. Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year most part deformed
With dripping rains, or withered by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies
And fields without a flower for warmer France
With all her vines, nor for Ausonia's groves
Of golden fruitage, and her myrtle bowers.
To shake thy senate, and from heights sublime
Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire
Upon thy foes was never meant my task;
But I can feel thy fortunes, and partake
Thy joys and sorrows with as true a heart
As any thunderer there.
—COWPER, The Task.
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
" This is my own, my native land !"
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand !
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured and unsung.
O Caledonia ! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child,
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires, what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band
That knits me to thy rugged strand !
—Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel.
O Scotia ! my dear, my native soil!
For whom my warmest wish to heaven is sent!
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
Be blest with health and peace and sweet content!
And O may heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,
A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle.
O Thou! who poured the patriotic tide
That streamed through Wallace's undaunted heart,
Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride,
Or nobly die, the second glorious part—
The patriot's God peculiarly thou art,
His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward !—
O never, never Scotia's realm desert,
But still the patriot and the patriot bard
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard !
—Burns, Cotter's Saturday Night.
As some lone miser, visiting bis store,
Bends at his treasure, counts, recounts it o'er;
Hoards after hoards his rising raptures fill,
Yet still he sighs, for hoards are wanting still;
Thus to my breast alternate passions rise,
Pleased with each good that heaven to man supplies;
Yet oft a sigh prevails, and sorrows fall,
To see the hoard of human bliss so small;
And oft I wish amidst the scene to find
Some spot to real happiness consigned,
Where my worn soul, each wandering hope at rest,
May gather bliss to see my fellows blest.
But where to find that happiest land below,
Who can direct, when all pretend to know ?
Such is the patriot's boast where'er we roam—
His first, best country ever is at home.
—Goldsmith, Traveller.
How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blessed !
When spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than fancy's feet have ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There, Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there !
—Collins.
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade ;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
A time there was, ere England's griefs began,
When every rood of ground maintained its man;
For him light labour spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life required, but gave no more :
His best companions, innocence and health ;
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.
—Goldsmith, Deserted Village.
Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen, who survey
The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay,
'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand
Between a splendid and a happy land.
Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore,
And shouting Folly hails them from her shore;
Hoards e'en beyond the miser's wish abound
And rich men flock from all the world around.
Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name
That leaves our useful products still the same.
Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride
Takes up a space that many poor supplied;
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds,
Space for his horses, equipage and hounds:
Around the world each needful product flies
For all the luxuries the world supplies;
While thus the land, adorned for pleasure all,
In barren splendour feebly waits the fall.
—Goldsmith, Deserted Village.
40. THE POET DESPAIRS OF HIS COUNTRY.
Time was when it was praise and boast enough,
In every clime, and travel where we might,
That we were born her1 children—praise enough
To fill the ambition of a private man,
That Chatham's language was his mother tongue,
And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own.
Farewell those honours, and farewell with them
The hope of such hereafter! They have fallen
Each in his field of glory; one in arms,
And one in council—Wolfe, upon the lap
Of smiling victory that moment won,
And Chatham, heart-sick of his country's shame
They made us many soldiers. Chatham, still
Consulting England's happiness at home,
Secured it by an unforgiving frown,
If any wronged her. Wolfe, where'er he fought,
Put so much of his heart into his act,
That his example had a magnet's force,
And all were swift to follow whom all loved.
Those suns are set. Oh, rise some other such,
Or all that we have left is empty talk
Of old achievements, and despair of new!
—Cowper, The Task.
O Winter, ruler of the inverted year,
Thy scattered hair with sleet like ashes filled,
Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks
Fringed with a beard made white with other snows
Than those of age, thy forehead wrapped in clouds,
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne
A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,
But urged by storms along its slippery way,
I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st,
And dreaded as thou art! Thou hold'st the sun 1 England's.
A prisoner in the yet undawning east,
Shortening his journey between morn and noon,
And hurrying him, impatient of his stay,
Down to the rosy west; but, kindly still,
Compensating his loss with added hours
Of social converse, and instructive ease,
And gathering, at short notice, in one group
The family dispersed, and fixing thought,
Not less dispersed by daylight and its cares.
I crown thee king of intimate delights,
Fireside enjoyments, homeborn happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturbed retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening know.
—Cowper, The Task.
42. EVEN IN LAUGHTER THE HEART IS SORROWFUL.
Fill the bright goblet, spread the festive board !
Summon the gay, the noble and the fair!
Through the loud hall in joyous concert poured,
Let mirth and music sound the dirge of Care !
But ask thou not if Happiness be there,
If the loud laugh disguise convulsive throe,
Or if the brow the heart's true livery wear;
Lift not the festal mask !—enough to know,
No scene of mortal life but teems with mortal woe.
—Soott, Lord of the Isles.
In peace, Love tunes the shepherd's reed;
In war, he mounts the warrior's steed;
In halls, in gay attire is seen;
In hamlets, dances on the green.
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below, and saints above;
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
—SCOTT, Lay of the Last Minstrel.
O who that shared them, ever shall forget
The emotions of the spirit-rousing time,
When breathless, in the mart, the couriers met,
Early and late, at evening and at prime;
When the loud cannon, and the merry chime
Hailed news on news, as field on field was won;
When Hope, long doubtful, soared at length sublime,
And our glad eyes, awake as day begun,
Watched Joy's broad banner rise to meet the rising sun!
O these were hours, when thrilling joy repaid
A long, long course of darkness, doubts and fears!
The heart-sick faintness of the hope delayed,
The waste, the woe, the bloodshed and the tears
That tracked with terror twenty rolling years—
All was forgot in that blithe jubilee.
Her downcast eye even pale Affliction rears,
To sigh a thankful prayer, amid the glee
That hailed the Despot's1 fall, and peace and liberty.
—Scott, Lord of the Isles.
1 Napoleon Bonaparte.
Thee, goddess, thee Britannia's isle adores:
How has she oft exhausted all her stores,
How oft in fields of death thy presence sought,
Nor thinks the mighty prize too dearly bought.'
On foreign mountains, may the sun refine
The grape's soft juice, and mellow it to wine,
With citron groves adorn a distant soil,
And the fat olive swell with floods of oil:
We envy not the warmer clime, that lies
In ten degrees of more indulgent skies,
Nor at the coarseness of our heaven repine,
Though o'er our heads the frozen Pleiads shine:
'T is liberty, that crowns Britannia's isle,
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains
smile.
- Addison, Later from Italy.
Behold, in awful march and dread array
The long extended squadrons shape their way!
Death, in approaching terrible, imparts
An anxious horror to the bravest hearts;
Yet do their beating breasts demand the strife,
And thirst of glory quells the love of life.
No vulgar fears can British minds control:
Heat of revenge and noble pride of soul
O'erlook the foe, advantaged by his post,
Lessen his numbers, and contract his host:
Though fens and floods possessed the middle space,
That unprovoked they would have feared to pass,
Nor fens nor floods can stop Britannia's bands,
When her proud foe, ranged on their borders, stands.
—Addison, The Campaign.
Fair as the earliest beam of eastern light,
When first, by the bewildered pilgrim spied,
It smiles upon the dreary brow of night,
And silvers o'er the torrent's foaming tide,
And lights the fearful path on mountain side—
Fair as that beam, although the fairest far,
Giving to horror grace, to danger pride,
Shine martial Faith and Courtesy's bright star
Through all the wreckful storms that cloud the brow of War.
—Scott, Lady of the Lake.
Night closed upon the conqueror's way,
And lightnings showed the distant hill
Where they who lost, that dreadful day,
Stood few and faint, but fearless still.
The soldier's hope, the patriot's zeal
For ever dimmed, for ever crossed—
Oh ! who can tell what heroes feel,
When all but life and honour's lost?
The last sad hour of freedom's dream
And valour's task moved slowly by,
While mute they watched, till morning's beam
Should rise, and give them light to die !
There is a world where souls are free,
Where tyrants taint not nature's bliss;
If death that world's bright opening be,
Oh ! who would live a slave in this?
—Moore.
Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue Ocean, roll !
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin—his control
Stops with the shore ; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined and unknown.
His steps are not upon thy paths; thy fields
Are not a spoil for him ; thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength, he wields
For earth's destruction, thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And dashest him again to earth.
—Byron, Childe Harold.
It is the sea, it is the sea, In all its vague immensity,
Fading and darkening in the distance!
Silent, majestical and slow,
The white ships haunt it to and fro,
With all their ghostly sails unfurled,
As phantoms from another world
Haunt the dim confines of existence!
But ah ! how few can comprehend
Their signals, or to what good end
From land to land they come and go!
Upon a land most vast and dark
The spirits of the dead embark,
All voyaging to unknown coasts.
We wave our farewells from the shore,
And they depart, and come no more
Or come as phantoms and as ghosts.
—Longfellow, The Golden Legend.
O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire and behold our home!
These are our realms; no limits to their sway;
Our flag the sceptre all, who meet, obey.
Ours the wild life, in tumult still to range
From toil to rest, and joy in every change.
Oh, who can tell?—not thou, luxurious slave
Whose soul would sicken o'er the heaving wave!
Not thou, vain lord of wantonness and ease,
Whom slumber soothes not, pleasure cannot please.—
Oh, who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried,
And danced in triumph o'er the waters wide,
The exulting sense, the pulse's maddening play,
That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way;
That for itself can woo the approaching fight,
And turn, what some deem danger, to delight;
That seeks what cravens shun with more than zeal,
And where the feebler faint, can only feel,—
Feel, to the rising bosom's inmost core,
Its hope awaken, and its spirit soar?
—Byron, Corsair.
The cave was brightened with a rising blaze;
Cedar and frankincense, an odorous pile,
Flamed on the hearth, and wide perfumed the isle;
While she with work and song the time divides,
And through the loom the golden shuttle guides.
Without the grot, a various sylvan scene
Appeared around, and groves of living green;
Poplars and alders ever quivering played,
And nodding cypress formed a fragrant shade,
On whose high branches, waving with the storm,
The birds of broadest wing their mansions form—
The chough, the sea-mew, the loquacious crow—
And scream aloft and skim the deeps below.
Depending vines the shelving cavern screen,
With purple clusters blushing through the green.
Four limpid fountains from the clefts distil,
And every fountain pours a several rill
In mazy windings wandering down the hill,
Where bloomy meads with vivid greens were crowned,
And glowing violets threw odours round.
—Pope, Odyssey.
1 level, like a plain.
Delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champain1 head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides,
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied ; and overhead up-grew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene, and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet, higher than their tops,
The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung;
And higher than that wall, a circling row
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue,
Appeared, with gay enamelled colours mixed,
On which the sun more glad impressed his beams
Than in fair evening cloud or humid bow.
Now gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils.
—Milton, Paradise Lost.
Lo the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To be, contents his natural desire—
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
—Pope, Essay on Man.
Stranger! if e'er thine ardent step hath traced
The northern realms of ancient Caledon,
Where the proud Queen of Wilderness hath placed,
By lake and cataract, her lonely throne;
Sublime but sad delight thy soul hath known,
Gazing on pathless glen and mountain high,
Listing where from the cliffs the torrents thrown
Mingle their echoes with the eagle's cry
And with the sounding lake and with the moaning sky
Yes! 'twas sublime, but sad.—The loneliness
Loaded thy heart, the desert tired thy eye,
And strange and awful fears began to press
Thy bosom with a stern solemnity.
Then hast thou wished some woodman's cottage nigh,
Something that showed of life, though low and mean:
Glad sight, its curling wreath of smoke to spy,
Glad sound, its cock's blithe carol would have been
Or children whooping wild beneath the willows green.
—Scott, Lord of the Isles.
56. THE SEASONS OF MAN'S MIND,
Four seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span :
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honeyed cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven : quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness—to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
--Keats, Sonnets.
Where then shall Hope and Fear their objects find?
Must dull suspense corrupt the stagnant mind ?
Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,
Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate ?
Must no dislike, alarm, no wishes rise,
No cries invoke the mercies of the skies?
Inquirer, cease; petitions yet remain
Which Heaven may hear; nor deem religion vain.
Still raise for good the supplicating voice;
But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.
Safe in his power whose eyes discern afar
The secret ambush of a specious prayer,
Implore his aid, in his decisions rest,
Secure, whate'er he gives, he gives the best.
—Dr. Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes.
If solitude hath ever led thy steps
To the wild ocean's echoing shore,
And thou hast lingered there,
Until the sun's broad orb
Seemed resting on the burnished wave,
Thou must have marked the lines
Of purple gold that, motionless,
Hung o'er the sinking sphere:
Thou must have marked the billowy clouds
Edged with intolerable radiancy
Towering like rocks of jet
Crowned with a diamond wreath.
And yet there is a moment,
When the sun's highest point
Peeps like a star o'er ocean's western edge,
When those far clouds of feathery gold,
Shaded with deepest purple, gleam
Like islands on a dark-blue sea;
Then has thy fancy soared above the earth,
And furled its wearied wing
Within the Fairy's fane.
—Shelley, Queen Mab.
Alas ! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth,
And constancy lives in realms above,
And life is thorny, and youth is vain,
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.
And thus it chanced, as 1 divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother:
They parted—ne'er to meet again !
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining:
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder—
A dreary sea now flows between.
But neither heat nor frost nor thunder
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been.
—Coleridge, Christabel.
See where it smokes along the sounding plain,
Blown all aslant, a driving, dashing rain,
Peal upon peal redoubling all around,
Shakes it again and faster to the ground;
Now flashing wide, now glancing as in play,
Swift beyond thought the lightnings dart away.
Ere yet it came, the traveller urged his steed,
And hurried, but with unsuccessful speed ;
Now, drenched throughout, and hopeless of his case,
He drops the rein, and leaves him to his pace.
Suppose, unlooked for in a scene so rude,
Long hid by interposing hill or wood,
Some mansion, neat and elegantly dressed,
By some kind hospitable heart possessed,
Offer him warmth, security and rest;
Think, with what pleasure, safe and at his ease,
He hears the tempest howling in the trees,
What glowing thanks his lips and heart employ,
While danger past is turned to present joy.
—Cowper, Truth,
God made the country and man made the town:
What wonder then, that health and virtue, gifts
That can alone make sweet the better draught
That life holds out to all, should most abound,
And least be threatened in the fields and groves?
Possess ye therefore, ye who, borne about
In chariots and sedans, know no fatigue
But that of idleness, and taste no scenes
But such as art contrives—possess ye still
Your element; there only can ye shine ;
There only minds like yours can do no harm.
Our groves were planted to console at noon
The pensive wanderer in their shades. At eve,
The moonbeam, sliding softly in between
The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish;
Birds warbling, all the music. We can spare
The splendour of your lamps; they but eclipse
Our softer satellite. Your songs confound
Our more harmonious notes : the thrush departs
Scared, and the offended nightingale is mute.
—Cowper, The, Task.
It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground;
And there a season atween1 June and May,
Half prankt2 with spring, with summer half imbrowned,
A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,
No living wight could work ne3 cared even to play.
Was nought around but images of rest:
Sleep-soothing groves and quiet lawns between;
And flowery beds that slumbrous influence kest4,
From poppies breathed ; and beds of pleasant green
Where never yet was creeping creature seen.
Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets played
And hurled everywhere their waters sheen,
That, as they bickered through the sunny glade,
Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made.
—Thomson, Castle of Indolence.
63. THE LAND OF INDOLENCE.—II.
Full in the passage of the vale, above,
A sable, silent, solemn forest stood,
Where nought but shadowy forms were seen to move,
As Idless5 fancied in her dreaming mood.
And up the hills, on either side, a wood
Of blackening pines, aye waving to and fro,
Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood ;
And where this valley winded out, below,
The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow.
A pleasing land of drowsyhed6 it was:
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye,
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer sky.
But whate'er smacked of noyance7 or unrest
Was far far off expelled from this delicious nest.
—Thomson, Castle of Indolence.
1 between. 2 adorned. 3 nor. 4 cast.
6 Idleness 6 drowsiness. 7 annoyance.
64. THE SLEEP OF THE INDOLENT.
Near the pavilions where we slept, still ran
Soft-tinkling streams, and dashing waters fell,
And sobbing breezes sighed, and oft began
(So worked the wizard), wintry storms to swell,
As heaven and earth they would together mell1:
At doors and windows, threatening, seemed to call
The demons of the tempest, growling fell2;
Yet the least entrance found they none at all;
Whence sweeter grew our sleep, secure in massy hall.
'And hither Morpheus sent his kindest dreams,
Raising a world of gayer tinct3 and grace;
O'er which were shadowy cast Elysian gleams,
That played in waving lights, from place to place,
And shed a roseate smile on nature's face.
—Thomson, Castle of Indolence.
O mortal man, who livest here by toil,
Do not complain of this thy hard estate;
That like an emmet4 thou must ever moil5
Is a sad sentence of an ancient date;
And, certes 6, there is for it reason great;
For, though sometimes it makes thee weep and wail,
And curse thy stars, and early drudge and late,
Withouten that would come an heavier bale—
Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale.
—Thomson, Castle of Indolence.
1 mingle. 2 fiercely. 3 tint.
4 ant. 5 labour. 6 truly.
Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind !
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart—
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And, when thy sons to fetters are consigned—
To fetters and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar—for 'twas trod
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard!1 May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God.
—Byron.
1 Bonnivard was imprisoned in the Castle of Chillon by the Duke of Savoy. The paved floor of the vault was worn bare by the prisoner's feet
67. THE ATTENDANT SPIRIT SPEAKS.
Before the starry threshold of Jove's Court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aerial spirits live insphered
In regions mild of calm and serene air,
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
Which men call Earth, and, with low-thoughted care,
Confined, and pestered in this pinfold here,
Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being,
Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives
After this mortal change to her true servants,
Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats.
Yet some there be, that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that golden key
That opes the palace of eternity.
To such my errand is, and but for such,
I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds
With the rank vapours of this sin-worn mould.
—Milton, Comus.
Ay, so the grass-hopper doth spend the time
In mirthful jollity, till winter come;
And then, too late, he would redeem his time,
When frozen cold hath nipped his careless head.
He, that no sooner will provide a cloak
Than when he sees it doth begin to rain,
May, peradventure, for his negligence
Be throughly washed when he suspects it not.
—Shakespeare (?), Edward III.
Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content;
The quiet mind is richer than a crown;
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent;
The poor estate scorns fortune's angry frown:
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss,
Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss.
The homely house that harbours quiet rest,
The cottage that affords no pride nor care,
The mean that 'grees with country music best,
The sweet consort of mirth and music's fare
Obscured life sets down a type of bliss:
A mind content both crown and kingdom is.
—R. Greene.
My mind to me a kingdom is,
Such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
That earth affords, or grows by kind :
Though much I want, which most would have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.
No princely pomp, no wealthy store,
No force to win the victory,
No wily wit to salve a sore,
No shape to feed a loving eye:
To none of these I yield as thrall:
For why ? My mind doth serve for all.
Content to live, this is my stay;
I seek no more than may suffice;
I press to bear no haughty sway;
Look, what I lack my mind supplies:
Lo, thus I triumph like a king,
Content with that my mind doth bring.
—Dyer.
How happy is he born and taught,
That serveth not another's will,
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill,
Whose passions not his masters are,
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Not tied unto the world by care
Of public fame or private breath,
Who envies none that chance doth raise
Nor vice, who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise,
Nor rules of state, but rules of good,
Who hath his life from rumours freed,
Whose conscience is his strong retreat,
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make accusers great,
Who God doth late and early pray
More of His grace than gifts to lend,
And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book or friend.
This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all.
—Wotton.
Laid in my quiet bed
In study as I were,
I saw within my troubled head
A heap of thoughts appear.
And every thought did shew
So lively in mine eyes,
That now I sighed, and then I smiled
As cause of thoughts did rise.
I saw the little boy,
In thought how oft that he
Did wish of God, to scape the rod,
A tall young man to be.
The young man eke, that feels
His bones with pains oppressed,
How he would be a rich old man
To live and lie at rest.
The rich old man that sees
His end draw on so sore,
How would he be a boy again
To live so much the more.
Whereat full oft I smiled,
To see how all these three,
From boy to man, from man to boy,
Would chop1 and change degree.
—Earl of Surrey,
1 shift
73. CARDINAL WOLSEY'S RISE AND FALL.
In full-flown dignity see Wolsey stand,
Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand:
To him the church, the realm, their powers consign;
Through him the rays of regal bounty shine;
Turned by his nod the stream of honour flows;
His smile alone security bestows :
Still to new heights his restless wishes tower,
Claim leads to claim, and power advances power,
Till conquest unresisted ceased to please,
And rights submitted left him none to seize :
At length his sovereign frowns—the train of state
Mark the keen glance, and watch the sign to hate.
Where'er he turns, he meets a stranger's eye;
His suppliants scorn him and his followers fly;
Now drops at once the pride of awful state,
The golden canopy, the glittering plate,
The regal palace, the luxurious board,
The liveried army, and the menial lord.
With age, with cares, with maladies oppressed
He seeks the refuge of monastic rest.
Grief aids disease; remembered folly stings;
And his last sighs reproach the faith of kings.
—Dr. Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes.
Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour,
Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in;
A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it.
Mark but my fall and that that ruined me.
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:
By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?
Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee.
Corruption wins not more than honesty.
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace
To silence envious tongues. Be just and fear not.
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,
Thy God's, and truth's; then, if thou fall'st, O Cromwell,
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr !
—Shakespeare, Henry VIII.
Eftsoons1 they heard a most melodious sound,
Of all that mote2 delight a dainty ear,
Such as at once might not on living ground,
Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere:
Right hard it was for wight which did it hear,
To rede3 what manner music that mote be,
For all that pleasing is to living ear,
Was there consorted in one harmony
Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree.
The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade,
Their notes unto the voice attemper'd sweet;
Th' angelical soft trembling voices made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver-sounding instruments did meet
With the bass murmur of the water's fall;
The water's fall with difference discreet4,
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call;
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.
—Spenser, Fairy Queen.
1 Presently. 2 might. 3 decide. 4 distinct.
Do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing, and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;
If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze,
By the sweet power of music : therefore, the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature;
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus :
Let no such man be trusted.
—Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice.-
As a fond mother, when the day is o'er,
Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant to be led
And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door,
Nor wholly reassured, nor comforted
By promises of others in their stead,
Which, though more splendid, may not please him more:
So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go,
Scarce knowing if we wished to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the what we know.
—Longfellow.
How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear,
Were discord to the speaking quietude
That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love has spread
To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow;
Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend,
So stainless that their white and glittering spires
Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep,
Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower
So idly that rapt fancy deemeth it
A metaphor of peace ; all form a scene
Where musing Solitude might love to lift
Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;
Where Silence undisturbed might watch alone,
So cold, so bright, so still.
—Shelley, Queen Mab.
Of all the griefs that harass the distressed,
Sure the most bitter is the scornful jest;
Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart,
Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart.
Has Heaven reserved in pity to the poor
No pathless waste or undiscovered shore?
No secret island in the boundless main ?
No peaceful desert yet unclaimed by Spain ?
Quick let us rise, the happy seats explore,
And bear oppression's insolence no more.
This mournful truth is everywhere confessed,
Slow rises worth by poverty depressed;
But here more slow where all are slaves to gold,
Where looks are merchandise, and smiles are sold,
Where, won by bribes, by flatteries implored,
The groom retails the favours of his lord.
—Dr. Johnson, London.
Like as a ship that through the ocean wide
By conduct of some star doth make her way,
Whenas a storm hath dimmed her trusty guide,
Out of her course doth wander far astray,
So I, whose star, that wont with her bright ray
Me to direct, with clouds is overcast,
Do wander now in darkness and dismay
Through hidden perils round about me placed;
Yet hope I well that, when this storm is past,
My Helice, the lodestar of my life,
Will shine again, and look on me at last
With lovely light to clear my cloudy grief:
Till then I wander careful, comfortless,
In secret sorrow and sad pensiveness.
—Spenser, Sonnets.
Of these the false Achitophel was first,
A name to all succeeding ages curst;
For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace ;
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity,
Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high,
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
fuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please,
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease ?
—Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel.
Some of their chiefs were princes of the land;
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand,
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome :
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts and nothing long;
But in the course of one revolving moon
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon.
Blest madman, who could every hour employ
With something new to wish or to enjoy !
Railing and praising were his usual themes,
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.
Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late;
He had his jest and they had his estate.
—Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel.
In climes beyond the solar road,
Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,
The Muse has broke the twilight gloom
To cheer the shivering native's dull abode
And oft, beneath the odorous shade
Of Chili's boundless forests laid,
She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat,
In loose numbers wildly sweet,
Their feather-cinctured chiefs and dusky loves.
Her track, where'er the goddess roves,
Glory pursue and generous Shame,
The unconquerable Mind and Freedom's holy flame.
—Gray, Progress of Poesy.
By nature's law, what may be, may be now;
There 'a no prerogative in human hours.
In human hearts what bolder thought can rise
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn?
Where is to-morrow? In another world.
For numbers this is certain: the reverse
Is sure to none; and yet on this " perhaps ",
This " peradventure ", infamous for lies,
As on a rock of adamant, we build
Our mountain hopes ; spin out eternal schemes,
As we the fatal sisters could outspin;
And, big with life's futurities, expire.
Of human ills the last extreme beware ;
Beware, Lorenzo, a slow sudden death.
How dreadful that deliberate surprise !
Be wise to-day ; 'tis madness to defer ;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time :
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
—Young, Night Thoughts.
Time rolls his ceaseless course.
The race of yore, Who danced our infancy upon their knee,
And told our marvelling boyhood legends store
Of their strange ventures happed by land or sea,
How are they blotted from the things that be!
How few, all weak and withered of their force,
Wait on the verge of dark eternity,
Like stranded wrecks, the tide returning hoarse
To sweep them from our sight!
Time rolls his ceaseless course.
—Scott, Lady of the Lake.
Hast thou not marked, when o'er thy startled head
Sudden and deep the thunder-peal has rolled,
How, when its echoes fell, a silence dead
Sunk on the wood, the meadow and the wold?
The rye-grass shakes not on the sod-built fold,
The rustling aspen's leaves are mute and still,
The wall-flower waves not on the ruined hold,
Till, murmuring distant first, then near and shrill,
The savage whirlwind wakes and sweeps the groaning hill.
—Scott, Lord of the Isles.
87. FUGIT IRREPARABILE TEMPUS.
The lapse of time and rivers is the same;
Both speed their journey with a restless stream ;
The silent pace with which they steal away,
No wealth can bribe, no prayers persuade to stay;
Alike irrevocable both when past,
And a wide ocean swallows both at last.
Though each resemble each in every part,
A difference strikes at length the musing heart:
Streams never flow in vain ; where streams abound,
How laughs the land with various plenty crowned!
But time, that should enrich the nobler mind,
Neglected, leaves a weary waste behind.
—Cowper.
Ye powers that rule the tongue, if such there are,
And make colloquial happiness your care,
Preserve me from the thing I dread and hate,
A duel in the form of a debate.
The clash of arguments and jar of words,
Worse than the mortal brunt of rival swords,
Decide no question with their tedious length
(For opposition gives opinion strength),
Divert the champions prodigal of breath,
And put the peaceably disposed to death.
Oh thwart me not, Sir Soph, at every turn
Nor carp at every flaw you may discern;
Though syllogisms hang not on my tongue,
I am not surely always in the wrong;
!T is hard if all is false that I advance,
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
—Cowper, Conversation.
Good sense will stagnate.
Thoughts shut up want air
And spoil like bales unopened to the sun.
Had thought been all, sweet speech had been denied—
Speech, thought's canal! speech, thought's criterion too !
Thought in the mine may come forth gold or dross:
When coined in words, we know its real worth.
If sterling, store it for thy future use :
'T will buy thee benefit—perhaps, renown.
Thought, too, delivered, is the more possessed;
Teaching, we learn; and giving, we retain
The births of intellect; when dumb, forgot.
Speech ventilates our intellectual fire ;
Speech burnishes our mental magazine;
Brightens, for ornament; and whets, for use.
What numbers, sheathed in erudition, lie
Plunged to the hilts in venerable tomes
And rusted in, who might have borne an edge
And played a sprightly beam, if born to speech—
If born blest heirs of half their mother's tongue!
—Young, Night Thoughts.
The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;
So calm are we when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, too certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.
The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become
As they draw near to their eternal home;
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
—Waller.
No unexpected inundations spoil
The mower's hopes, nor mock the ploughman's toil,
But godlike his unwearied bounty flows;
First loves to do, then loves the good he does.
Nor are his blessings to his banks confined,
But free and common as the sea or wind.
"When he, to boast or to disperse his stores,
Full of the tributes of his grateful shores
Visits the world, and in his flying towers
Brings home to us and makes both Indies ours:
Finds wealth where 'tis, bestows it where it wants;
Cities in deserts, woods in cities plants;
So that to us no thing, no place is strange,
While his fair bosom is the world's exchange.
O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong, without rage; without o'erflowing, full.
—Denham, Cooper's Hill.
Earth has not anything to show more fair;
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep,
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still.
- -Wordsworth, Sonnet.
To my true king I offered free from stain
Courage and faith; vain faith and courage vain.
For him I threw lands, honours, wealth away,
And one dear hope that was more prized than they.
For him I languished in a foreign clime,
Gray-haired with sorrow in my manhood's prime;
Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees,
And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees;
Beheld each night my home in fevered sleep;
Each morning started from my dream to weep;
Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave
The resting-place I asked, an early grave.
Oh thou whom chance leads to this nameless stone
From that proud country which was once mine own,
By those white cliffs I never more must see,
By that dear language which I spake like thee,
Forget all feuds and shed one English tear
O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.
—Macaulay.
94. SONNET TO THE NIGHTINGALE.
Sweet bird that sing'st away the early hours,
Of winters past or coming void of care,
Well pleased with delights that present are—
Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers;
To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers
Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare,
And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,
A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.
What soul can be so sick which by thy songs,
Attired in sweetness, sweetly is not driven
Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites and wrongs,
And lift a reverent eye and thought to heaven?
Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raise
To airs of spheres, yes, and to angels' lays.
—Drummond.
In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs—and God has given my share—
I still had hopes, my latest years to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down,
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose :
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,
Around my fire an evening group to draw
And tell of all I felt and all I saw;
And, as an hare whom hounds and horns pursue
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return—and die at home at last.
—Goldsmith, Deserted Village.
O blest retirement, friend of life's decline,
Retreats from care, that never must be mine,
How happy he, who crowns in shades like these
A youth of labour with an age of ease,
Who quits a world where strong temptations try,
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly!
For him no wretches, born to work and weep,
Explore the mine or tempt the dangerous deep;
No surly porter stands in guilty state
To spurn imploring famine from the gate;
But on he moves to meet his latter end,
Angels around befriending Virtue's friend;
Bends to the grave with unperceived decay,
While resignation gently slopes the way;
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past!
—Goldsmith, Deserted Village.
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
By strangers honoured and by strangers mourned!
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances and the public show?
What though no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polished marble emulate thy face ?
What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be dressed
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.
—Pope, Elegy.
98. THE PLEASURE OF VICISSITUDE.
Yesterday the sullen year
Saw the snowy whirlwind fly;
Mute was the music of the air,
The herd stood drooping by;
Their raptures now that wildly flow
No yesterday nor morrow know :
'Tis man alone that joy descries
With forward and reverted eyes.
Smiles on past misfortune's brow
Soft reflection's hand can trace,
And o'er the cheek of sorrow throw
A melancholy grace;
While hope prolongs our happier hour,
Or deepest shades, that dimly lower
And blacken round our weary way,
Gilds with a gleam of distant day.
Still, where rosy pleasure leads,
See a kindred grief pursue;
Behind the steps that misery treads
Approaching comfort view:
The hues of bliss more brightly grow
Chastised by sabler tints of woe,
And blended form with artful strife
The strength and harmony of life.
—Gray.
Let reason mitigate your care :
To mourn avails not: man is born to bear.
Such is, alas! the gods' severe decree:
They, only they are blest, and only free.
Two urns by Jove's high throne have ever stood,
The source of evil one, and one of good ;
From thence the cup of mortal man he fills,
Blessings to these, to those distributes ills;
To most he mingles both: the wretch decreed
To taste the bad unmixed, is cursed indeed;
Pursued by wrongs, by meagre famine driven,
He wanders, outcast both of earth and heaven.
The happiest taste not happiness sincere;
But find the cordial draught is dash with care.
—Pope, Iliad.
100. MAKE A VIRTUE OF NECESSITY.
All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
Teach thy necessity to reason thus;
There is no virtue like necessity.
Think not the king did banish thee, But thou the king.
Woe doth the heavier sit
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour
And not the king exiled thee; or suppose
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air
And thou art flying to a fresher clime:
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou contest:
Suppose the singing birds musicians,
The grass whereon thou tread'st the presence1 strewed,
The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more
Than a delightful measure or a dance ;
For gnarling2 sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it and sets it light.
—Shakespeare, Richard II.
1 the royal presence-chamber. 2 snarling.
101. POLONIUS' ADVICE TO HIS SON.
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.
Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear 't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure1, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry 2.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
—Shakespeare, Hamlet.
1 opinion, judgment. 2 management-
By him lay heavy Sleep, the cousin of Death,
Flat on the ground, and still as any stone,
A very corpse, save yielding forth a breath:
Small keep3 took he, whom Fortune frowned on,
Or whom she lifted up into the throne
Of high renown; but as a living death,
So, dead alive, of life he drew the breath.
The body's rest, the quiet of the heart,
The travail's ease, the still night's fear was he,
And of our life on earth the better part:
Reaver of sight, and yet in whom we see
Things oft that tide1 and oft that never be:
Without respect, esteeming equally,
King Croesus' pomp and Irus' poverty.
—Sackville, Mirror of Magistrates.
1 happen. 3 heed.
We then
Make here our suit alike to gods and men-
The one, until the period of our race,
To inspire us with a free and quiet mind,
Discerning both divine and human laws;
The other, to vouchsafe us after death
An honourable mention and fair praise
To accompany our actions and our name :
The rest of greatness princes may command,
And, therefore, may neglect; only a long,
A lasting, high and happy memory
They should, without being satisfied, pursue:
Contempt of fame begets contempt of virtue.
—Ben Jonson, Sejanus.
Great princes have great playthings.
Some have played
At hewing mountains into men, and some
At building human wonders mountain high.
Some have amused the dull sad years of life,
Life spent in indolence and therefore sad,
With schemes of monumental fame, and sought
By pyramids and mausolean pomp,
Short-lived themselves, to immortalize their bones.
Some seek division in the tented field,
And make the sorrows of mankind their sport.
But war's a game which, were their subjects wise,
Kings would not play at. Nations would do well
To extort their truncheons from the puny hands
Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief, and who spoil,
Because men suffer it, their toy the world.
—Cowper, The Task.
I pity kings whom worships waits upon
Obsequious from the cradle to the throne,
Before whose infant eyes the flatterer bows
And binds a wreath about his baby brows,
Whom education stiffens into state,
And death awakens from that dream too late.
Oh ! if servility with supple knees,
Whose trade it is to smile, to crouch, to please;
If smooth dissimulation, skilled to grace
A devil's purpose with an angel's face;
If smiling peeresses and simpering peers,
Encompassing his throne a few short years;
If the gilt carriage and the pampered steed,
That wants no driving and disdains the lead ;
If guards mechanically formed in ranks,
Playing at beat of drum their martial pranks,
Shouldering and standing, as if struck to stone,
While condescending majesty looks on;
If monarchy consists in such base things,
Sighing, I say again, I pity kings!
—COWPER, Table Talk.
Let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of king's:
How some have been deposed ; some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poisoned by their wives ; some sleeping killed ;
All murdered : for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court, and there the antic1 sits
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humoured thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through the castle wall, and farewell king!
—Shakespeare, Richard II.
1 buffoon.
As withereth the primrose by the river,
As fadeth summer's sun from gliding fountains,
As vanisheth the light-blown bubble ever,
As melteth snow upon the mossy mountains:
So melts, so vanisheth, so fades, so withers,
The rose, the shine, the bubble and the snow,
Of praise, pomp, glory, joy, which short life gathers,
Fair praise, vain pomp, sweet glory, brittle joy.
The withered primrose by the mourning river,
The faded summer's sun from weeping fountains,
The light-blown bubble, vanished for ever,
The molten snow upon the naked mountains,
Are emblems that the treasures we uplay,
Soon wither, vanish, fade and melt away.
—Bolton in England's Helicon.
Know that in the soul
Are many lesser faculties, that serve
Reason as chief. Among these
Fancy next Her office holds; of all external things
Which the five watchful senses represent,
She forms imaginations, aery shapes,
Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames
All what we affirm or what deny, and call
Our knowledge or opinion; then retires
Into her private cell when Nature rests.
Oft, in her absence, mimic
Fancy wakes To imitate her; but, misjoining shapes,
Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams,
Ill matching words and deeds long past or late.
—Milton, Paradise Lost.
The quality of mercy is not strained ;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath; it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes;
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.
—Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice.
O God! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea! and, other times, to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune's hips; how chances mock
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.
—Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV.
He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress
(Before Decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers),
And marked the mild, angelic air,
The rapture of repose that's there,
The fixed yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
And, but for that sad shrouded eye,
That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now,
And but for that chill, changeless brow,
Where cold Obstruction's apathy
Appals the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart
The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon;
Yes, but for these and these alone,
Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly sealed,
The first, last look by death revealed!
Such is the aspect of this shore;
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more!
—Byron, Giaour.
112. CALL TO THE GREEKS TO RISE AGAINST THE TURKS.
Approach, thou craven, crouching slave:
Say, is not this Thermopylae?
These waters blue that round you lave,—
O servile offspring of the free,
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis!
These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise, and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he, who in the strife expires,
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame:
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
—Byron, Giaour.
Where men of judgment creep and feel their way,
The positive pronounce without dismay,
Their want of light and intellect supplied
By sparks absurdity strikes out of pride;
Without the means of knowing right from wrong,
They always are decisive, clear and strong;
Where others toil with philosophic force,
Their nimble nonsense takes a shorter course.
Flings at your head conviction in a lump,
And gains remote conclusions at a jump;
Their own defect, invisible to them,
Seen in another, they at once condemn;
And though self-idolised in every case,
Hate their own likeness in a brother's face.
— Cowper, Conversation.
114. ON THE SUBJUGATION OF SWITZERLAND.
Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice:
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen music, Liberty !
There came a Tyrant1, and with holy glee
Thou fought'st against him; but hast vainly striven:
Thou from thine Alpine holds at length art driven,
Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee.
Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft;
Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left,
For, high-souled Maid, what sorrow would it be
That Mountain floods should thunder as before
And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore,
And neither awful Voice be heard by thee!
—Wordsworth, Sonnets.
1 Napoleon Bonaparte.
All the means of action—
The shapeless masses—the materials—
Lie everywhere about us.
What we need Is the celestial fire to change the flint
Into transparent crystal, bright and clear.
That fire is genius ! The rude peasant sits
At evening in his smoky cot, and draws
With charcoal uncouth figures on the wall.
The son of genius comes, footsore with travel,
And begs a shelter from the inclement night.
He takes the charcoal from the peasant's hand
And, by the magic of his touch at once
Transfigured, all its hidden virtues shine
And, in the eyes of the astonished clown,
It gleams a diamond ! Even thus transformed,
Rude popular traditions and old tales
Shine as immortal poems, at the touch
Of some poor, houseless, homeless, "wandering Lard,
Who had but a night's lodgings for his pains.
—Longfellow, The Spanish Student.
Our life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality.
And dreams, in their development, have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils;
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past; they speak
Like sibyls of the future ; they have power—
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not—what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by.
—Byron, The Dream.
117. SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spririts and
Are melted into air, into thin air :
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack1 behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
—Shakespeare, Tempest.
1 drifting cloud, or wreck
Therefore, to be possessed with double pomp,
To guard1 a title that was rich before,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
—Shakespeare, King John.
1 decorate
119. SATAN ADDRESSES HIS NEW ABODE.
Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal World! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor; one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And, what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater?
Here at least We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
—Milton, Paradise Lost.
He, above the rest,
In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower. His form had yet not lost
All her original brightness; nor appeared
Less than Archangel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscured : as when the sun, new-risen,
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone
Above them all the Archangel: but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched ; and care
Sat on his faded cheek; but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
Waiting revenge.
—Milton, Paradise Lost
What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome;
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who, from the terror of this arm, so late
Doubted his Empire—that were low indeed ;
That were an ignominy and shame beneath This downfall.
—Milton, Paradise Lost,
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing;
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'erdarkened ways
Made for our searching! Yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees, old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep ; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in, and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms;
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.
—Keats, Endymion.
The men are not the same ! 'T is we are base,
Poor and degenerate from the exalted strain
Of our great fathers. Where is now the soul
Of god-like Cato—he, that durst be good
When Caesar durst be evil, and had power,
As not to live his slave, to die his master?
Or where's the constant Brutus, that being proof
Against all charm of benefits, did strike
So brave a blow into the monster's heart
That sought unkindly to captive his country ?
O, they are fled the light! Those mighty spirits
Lie raked up with their ashes in their urns,
And not a spark of their eternal fire
Glows in a present bosom. All's but blaze,
Flashes and smoke, wherewith we labour so;
There's nothing Roman in us; nothing good,
Gallant, or great: 'tis true that Cordus says,
" Brave Cassius was the last of all that race ".
—Ben Jonson, Sejanus.
124. THE DUKE PRAISES HIS LIFE IN EXILE.
Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court ?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The seasons' difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say "
This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am ".
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in everything.
—Shakespeare, As You Like It.
When we mean to build,
We first survey the plot, then draw the model;
And when we see the figure of the house.
Then must we rate the cost of the erection ;
Which if we find outweighs ability,
What do we then but draw anew the model
In fewer offices, or at last desist To build at all ?
Much more, in this great work,
Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down
And set another up, should we survey
The plot of situation and the model,
Consent upon a sure foundation,
Question surveyors, know our own estate,
How able such a work to undergo,
To weigh against his opposite; or else
We fortify in paper and in figures,
Using the names of men instead of men:
Like one that draws the model of a house
Beyond his power to build it; who, half through,
Gives o'er and leaves his part-created cost
A naked subject to the weeping clouds,
And waste for churlish winter's tyranny.
— Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman : the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
—Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream.
Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man : to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory,
But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride
At length broke under me, and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye:
I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours!
When he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again.
—Shakespeare, Henry VIII.
Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy,
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all triumphant splendour on my brow;
But out, alack ! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath masked him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth,
—Shakespeare, Sonnets.
129. MONUMENTUM AERE PERENNIUS.
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
—Shakespeare, Sonnets.
130. THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM.
So may the outward shows be least themselves;
The world is still deceived with ornament.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But, being seasoned with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil?
In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it, and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
There is no vice so simple, but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.
How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars,
Who, inward searched, have livers white as milk;
And these assume but valour's excrement1,
To render them redoubted! Look on beauty,
And you shall see 'tis purchas'd by the weight;
Which therein works a miracle in nature,
Making them lightest that wear most of it:
So are those crisped snaky golden Jocks,
Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,
Upon supposed fairness, often known
To be the dowry of a second head,
The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.
Thus ornament is but the guiled shore
To a most dangerous sea; in a word,
The seeming truth which cunning times put on
To entrap the wisest.
—Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice.
1 outward sign
131. PRINCE HENRY EXPLAINS HIS FRIVOLITY.
Herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wished for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behaviour I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I’ll so offend, to make offence a skill;
Redeeming time when men think least I will.
—Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV.
132. HENRY APOSTROPHISES SLEEP.
O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I flighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness ?
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lulled with sound of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and leavest the kingly couch
A watch-case or a common 'larum-bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them
With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king ? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
—Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV.
133. TIBERIUS ON THE TRUE GLORY OF A PRINCE.
For our part,
We here protest it, and are covetous
Posterity should know it, we are mortal
And can but deeds of men : 'twere glory enough,
Could we be truly a prince. And they shall add
Abounding grace unto our memory,
That shall report us worthy our forefathers,
Careful of your affairs, constant in dangers,
And not afraid of any private frown
For public good. These things shall be to us
Temples and statues, reared in your minds,
The fairest and most durable imagery;
For those of stone or brass, if they become
Odious in judgment of posterity,
Are more contemned as dying sepulchres
Than ta'en for living monuments.
—Ben Jonson, Sejanus.
134. EDWARD II. ON HIS WRONGS.
The griefs of private men are soon allayed,
But not of kings. The forest deer, being struck,
Runs to an herb that closeth up the wounds;
But, when the imperial lion's flesh is gored,
He rends and tears it with his wrathful paw;
And, highly scorning that the lowly earth
Should drink his blood, mounts up to the air.
And so it fares with me, whose dauntless mind
The ambitious Mortimer would seek to curb,
And that unnatural queen, false Isabel,
That thus hath pent and mewed me in a prison;
For such outrageous passions cloy my soul,
As with the wings of rancour and disdain
Full often am I soaring up to Heaven
To plain1 me to the gods against them both.
But when I call to mind I am a king,
Methinks I should revenge me of my wrongs.
But what are kings, when regiment2 is gone,
But perfect shadows in a sunshine day ?
My nobles rule, I bear the name of king:
I wear the crown, but am controlled by them.
—Marlowe, Edward II.
1 complain. 2 rule.
Exeter. While that the armed hand doth fight abroad,
The advised head defends itself at home :
For government, though high and low and lower,
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent1,
Congreeing in a full and natural close, Like music.
Canterbury. Therefore doth heaven divide
The state of man in divers functions,
Setting endeavour in continual motion,
To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, Obedience.
I this infer
That many things, having full reference
To one consent, may work contrariously.
As many arrows, loosed several ways,
Come to one mark; as many ways meet in one town;
As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea;
As many lines close in the dial's centre;
So may a thousand actions, once afoot,
End in one purpose, and be all well borne
Without defeat.
—Shakespeare, Henry V.
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that 'Caesar'?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well ;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed !
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was famed with more than with one man?
When could they say till now, that talk'd of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass'd but one man ?
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When there is in it but one only man.
—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.
1 harmony.
137. VITA BREVIS.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle !
Life 's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
— Shakespeare, Macbeth.
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful is man !
How passing wonder He who made him such,
Who centred in our make such strange extremes
From different natures marvellously mixed,
Connection exquisite of distant worlds !
Distinguished link in being's endless chain,
Midway from nothing to the deity!
A beam ethereal, sullied and absorbed !
Though sullied and dishonoured, still divine !
Dim miniature of greatness absolute !
An heir of glory ! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! insect infinite!
A worm! a god !
—Young, Night Thoughts.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking1 in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern2 instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth scene shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon 3,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans4 teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
—Shakespeare, As You Like It.
1 slobbering. 2 trivial, commonplace. 3 old dotard. 4 without.
Be absolute for death; either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences,
That dost this habitation where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun
And yet runn'st toward him still.
Thou'rt by no means valiant;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get,
And what thou hast, forget'st.
If thou art rich, thou'rt poor;
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee.
Thou hast nor youth nor age,
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both.
—Shakespeare, Measure for Measure.
On this side and on that men see their friends
Drop off like leaves in autumn, yet launch out
Into fantastic schemes which the long livers
In the world's hale and undegenerate days
Could scarce have leisure for. Fools that we are
Never to think of death and of ourselves
At the same time ; as if to learn to die
Were no concern of ours ! Oh ! more than sottish
For creatures of a day in gamesome mood
To frolic on Eternity's dread brink,
Unapprehensive, when, for aught we know,
The very first swollen surge shall sweep us in.
Think we or think we not, time hurries on
With a resistless unremitting stream;
Yet treads more soft than e'er did midnight thief,
That slides his hand under the miser's pillow
And carries off his prize.
— Blair, The Grave.
What has this bugbear death that's worth our care?
After a life of pain and sorrow past,
After deluding hopes and dire despair,
Death only gives us quiet at the last.
How strangely are our love and hate misplaced!
Freedom we seek and yet from freedom flee,
Courting those tyrant sins that chain us fast,
And shunning death that only sets us free.
'T is not a foolish fear of future pains,—
Why should they fear who keep their souls from stains ?—
That makes me dread thy terrors, Death, to see;
'T is not the loss of riches or of fame
Or the vain toys the vulgar pleasures name;
'T is nothing, Celia, but the losing thee!
—Walsh.
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where :
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice ;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling : 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death.
—Shakespeare, Measure for Measure.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep : perchance to dream : ay, there 's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause : there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin1? who would fardels2 bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
—Shakespeare, Hamlet.
1 dagger. 2 burdens.
145. CATO ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.
Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man. Here will I hold.
If there's a Power above us—
And that there is, all nature cries aloud
Through all her works—He must delight in virtue,
And that which he delights in, must be happy:
But when? or where? This world was made for Caesar.
I'm weary of conjectures; this1 must end them.
Thus am I doubly armed. My death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me:
This in a moment brings me to an end;
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt, amid the war of elements,
The wreck of matter and the crash of worlds.
—Addison, Cato.
1 his dagger
146. INTEGER VITAE SCELERISQUE PURUS.
The virtuous man, Who, great in his humility, as kings
Are little in their grandeur; he who leads
Invincibly a life of resolute good,
And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths
More free and fearless than the trembling judge,
Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove
To bind the impassive spirit: when he falls,
His mild eye beams benevolence no more;
Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve;
Sunk reason's simple eloquence, that rolled
But to appal the guilty. Yes ! the grave
Hath quenched that eye, and death's relentless frost
Withered that arm; but the unfading fame
Which virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb;
The deathless memory of that man whom kings
Call to their mind and tremble; the remembrance,
With which the happy spirit contemplates
Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth, Shall never pass away.
—Shelley, Queen Mab.
Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights and live laborious days;
But, the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears
And slits the thin-spun life. " But not the praise".
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears:
" Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-seeing Jove:
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed ".
—Milton, Lycidas.
148. SONNET ON HIS HAVING ARRIVED AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE.
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year?
My hasting days fly on with full career;
But my late spring no bud or blossom sheweth.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endueth.
Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven.
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.
—Milton.
149. SAMSON, VISITED IN PRISON, SPEAKS:—
Your coming, friends, revives me ; for I learn
Now of my own experience, not by talk,
How counterfeit a coin they are who 'friends'
Bear in their superscription—of the most
I would be understood. In prosperous days
They swarm ; but in adverse withdraw their head,
Not to be found, though sought. Ye see,
O friends! How many evils have enclosed me round;
Yet that which was the worst now least afflicts me,
Blindness; for, had I sight, confused with shame,
How could I once look up, or heave the head,
Who, like a foolish pilot, have shipwrecked
My vessel, trusted to me from above,
Gloriously rigged, and for a word, a tear,
Fool! have divulged the secret gift of
God To a deceitful woman ?
—Milton, Samson Agonistes.
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide.
And that one talent, which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He, returning, chide;
"Doth God exact day labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies : " God doth not need
Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is Kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."
—Milton.
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