For Hope. Hope! let the wretch, once conscious of the joy, Hope! thou nurse of young desire. Whom now despairing agonies destroy, It is to hope, though hope were lost. Come here, fond youth COWPER. A. L. BARBAULD. Love in a Village, Act i. Sc. 1. A. COWLEY. 1. BICKERSTAFF. True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings; SHAKESPEARE. Hope, like a cordial, innocent though strong, DR. E. YOUNG. Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought. King Henry IV., Part II. Activ. Sc. 4. SHAKESPEARE. Cease, every joy, to glimmer on my mind, Far off the massive portals of the wood, Buttressed with shadow, misty-blue, serene, Waited my coming. Speedily I stood Where the dun wall rose roofed in plumy green. Dare one go in ?-Glance backward! Dusk as night Each column, fringed with sprays of amber light. No stir nor call the sacred hush profanes; Save when from some bare tree-top, far on high, Fierce disputations of the clamorous cranes Fall muffled, as from out the upper sky. The hollow dome is green with empty shade, Struck through with slanted shafts of afternoon; Aloft, a little rift of blue is made, Where slips a ghost that last night was the moon. Beside its pearl a sea-cloud stays its wing, Beneath, a tilted hawk is balancing. Continued. The heart feels not in every time and mood The mind not always sees; but if there shine A silky glint that rides a spider-line, On a trefoil two shadow spears that cross, Three grasses that toss up their nodding heads, With spring and curve like clustered fountain-threads, Suddenly, through side windows of the eye, In a mysterious world, unpeopled yet. If death be but resolving back again Into the world's deep soul, this is a kind Listen! A deep and solemn wind on high; The shafts of shining dust shift to and fro; The columned trees sway imperceptibly, And creak as mighty masts when trade-winds blow. The cloudy sails are set; the earth ship swings Along the sea of space to grander things. EDWARD ROWLAND SILL. Besides what hope the never-ending flight Of future days may bring. Paradise Lost, Book ii. MILTON. And, when the stream Which overflowed the soul was passed away, A consciousness remained that it had left, Deposited upon the silent shore Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions Of memory, images and precious thoughts Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear, (A sigh the absent claims, the dead a tear.) Epistle to Robert, Earl of Oxford, and Earl of Mortimer. POPE For it so falls out, That what we have we prize not to the worth, Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost, Why, then we rack the value; then we find The virtue, that possession would not show us Whiles it was ours. So will it fare with Claudio: When he shall hear she died upon his words, Th' idea of her life shall sweetly creep Into his study of imagination, And every lovely organ of her life Shall come apparelled in more precious habit, Into the eye and prospect of his soul, Than when she lived indeed. Much Ado about Nothing, Act iv. Sc. 1. SHAKESPEARE |