No jocund health, that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell;
And the king's rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder.
Give me a bowl of wine:
In this I bury all unkindness, Cassius.
Give me a bowl of wine:
I have not that alacrity of spirit,
Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have.
Shaks. Richard III.
As with new wine intoxicated both,
They swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel
Divinity within them breeding wings
Wherewith to scorn the earth.
Milton's Paradise Lost.
Man, with raging drink inflam'd,
Shaks. Julius Cæsar. Is far more savage and untam'd;
Supplies his loss of wit and sense
With barb'rousness and insolence;
Believes himself, the less he's able,
The more heroic, and formidable;
Lays by his reason in his bowls,
As Turks are said to do their souls,
Until it has so often been
Shut out of its lodgings, and let in,
At length it never can attain
To find the right way back again;
Drinks all his time away, and prunes
The end of's life as vignerons
Cut short the branches of a vine,
To make it bear more plenty o' wine;
And that which nature did intend
T'enlarge his life, perverts its end.
Drunkenness! that's a most gentleman-like
Sin, it scorns to be beholden; for what it
Receives in a man's house, it commonly
Leaves again at his door.
Fly drunkenness, whose vile incontinence
Takes both away the reason and the sense:
Till with Circæan cups thy mind possest
Leaves to be man, and wholly turns a beast.
Think while thou swallow'st the capacious bowl,
Thou let'st in seas to sack and drown thy soul.
That hell is open, to remembrance call,
And think how subject drunkards are to fall.
Consider how it soon destroys the grace
Of human shape, spoiling the beauteous face:
Puffing the cheeks, blearing the curious eye,
Studding the face with vicious heraldry.
What pearls and rubies does the wine disclose,
Making the purse poor to enrich the nose!
How does it nurse disease, infect the heart,
Drawing some sickness into every part!
Thus as they swim in mutual swill, the talk,
Vociferous at once from twenty tongues,
Reels fast from theme to theme; from horses,
hounds,
To church or mistress, politics or ghost,
In endless mazes, intricate, perplex'd.
Confused above,
Glasses and bottles, pipes and gazetteers,
As if the table even itself was drunk,
Lie a wet broken scene; and wide, below,
Is heap'd the social slaughter: where astride,
The lubber power in filthy triumph sits,
Slumb'rous, inclining still from side to side,
And steeps them drench'd in potent sleep till morn.
Perhaps some doctor, of tremendous paunch,
Awful and deep, a black abyss of drink,
Outlives them all, and from his bury'd flock
Retiring full of rumination sad,
Laments the weakness of these latter times.
Thomson's Seasons.
What dext'rous thousands just within the goal
Of wild debauch direct their nightly course!
Perhaps no sickly qualms bedim their days,
No morning admonitions shock the head.
But ah! what woes remain! life rolls apace,
And that incurable disease-old age,
In youthful bodies more severely felt,
More sternly active, shakes their blasted prime.
Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health
When the frantic raptures in your breast Subside, you languish into mortal man; You sleep, and waking find yourself undone. For, prodigal of life, in one rash night You lavish'd more than might support three days. A heavy morning comes; your cares return With tenfold rage. An anxious stomach well May be endured; so may the throbbing heart: But such a dim delirium, such a dream, Involves you; such a dastardly despair Unmans your soul, as madd'ning Pentheus felt, When, baited round Citharon's sides,
He saw two suns, and double Thebes, ascend,— Add that your means, your health, your parts decay;
Your friends avoid you; brutishly transform'd
They hardly know you, or, if one remains
To wish you well, he wishes you in heaven.
Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health.
Am I to set my life upon a throw
Because a bear is rude and surly?—No!
A moral, sensible, and well-bred man
Will not affront me, and no other can.
'Tis hard indeed, if nothing will defend
Mankind from quarrels but their fatal end;
That now and then a hero must decease,
That the surviving world may live in peace.
Perhaps at last close scrutiny may show
The practice dastardly, and mean and low;
That men engage in it, compell'd by force,
And fear, not courage, is its proper source;
The fear of tyrant custom, and the fear
Lest fops should censure us, and fools should sncer
At least to trample on our Maker's laws,
And hazard life for any or no cause.
Cowper's Conversation
It is a strange quick jar upon the ear,
That cocking of a pistol, when
you know
A moment more will bring the sight to bear
Upon your person, twelve yards off, or so;
A gentlemanly distance, not too near,
If you have got a former friend for foe;
But after being fired at once or twice,
The ear becomes more Irish, and less nice.
Byron
To thy widow'd marriage-pillows,
To the tears that thou shalt weep!
Vain we number every duty,
Number all our prayers and tears,
Still the spirit lacketh beauty,
Still it droops with many fears.
Mrs. E. Oakes Smith To hallow'd duty, Here with a loyal and heroic heart, Bind we our lives.
EARTH-EARTHQUAKE – EATING - ECSTACY – EDUCATION.
Then the purposes of life
Stood apart from vulgar strife, Labour in the path of duty
Gleam'd up like a thing of beauty.
For Love himself took part against himself
To warn us off, and Duty lov'd of Love,
O this world's curse,-belov'd but hated-came
Like Death between thy dear embrace and mine.
Tennyson.
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth some special good doth give.
Shaks. Romeo and Juliet.
The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb.
Shaks. Romeo and Juliet.
And fast by hanging in a golden chain
This pendent world, in bigness as a star.
Milton's Paradise Lost.
Earth's days are number'd, nor remote her doom;
As mortal, tho' less transient, than her sons.
Young's Night Thoughts.
Where is the dust that has not been alive?
The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;
From human mould we reap our daily bread.
Young's Night Thoughts.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came
Wordsworth.
'Tis earth shall lead destruction; she shall end,
The stars shall wonder why she comes no more
On her accustom'd orbit, and the sun
Miss one of his eleven of light; the moon,
An orphan orb, shall seek for earth for aye
Through time's untrodden depths, and find her not.
Bailey's Festus.
My kindred earth I see;—
Once every atom or this ground
Lived, breathed and felt like me.
And I am earthly, so I love it well; Though heaven is holier, and full of light,
Yet I am frail, and with frail things would dwell. Mrs. Judson.
How can he rule well in a commonwealth,
Which knoweth not himself in rule to frame?
How should he rule himself in ghostly health,
Which never learn'd one lesson for the same?
If such catch harm, their parents are to blame.
For needs must they be blind, and blindly led,
Where no good lesson can be taught or read.
Cavil in the Mirror for Magistrate
For noble youth, there is no thing so meet
As learning is, to know the good from ill:
To know the tongues, and perfectly indite,
And of the laws to have a perfect skill,
Things to reform as right and justice will:
For honour is ordained for no caus
But to see right maintained by the laws.
Cavil in the Mirror for Magistrates
Of parents will to handicrafts resort:
If they observe their children to produce
Some flashings of a mounting genius,
Then must they with all diligence invade
Some rising calling, or some gainful trade;
But if, by chance, they have one leaden soul,
Born for to number eggs, he must to school;
'Specially if some patron will engage
Th' advowson of a neighbouring vicarage;
Strange hedly-medly! who would make his swine
Turn greyhounds, or hunt foxes with his kine?
Man's like a barren and ungrateful soil,
That seldom pays the labour of manuring.
Sir Robert Howard's Blind Lady
EGOTISM-ELEGANCE-ELOQUENCE.
'Tis education forms the common mind;
Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclin'd.
Boastful and rough, your first son is a squire;
The next a tradesman meek, and much a liar;
Tom struts a soldier, open, bold, and brave;
Will sneaks a scrivener, an exceeding knave;
Is he a churchman? Then he's fond of pow'r;
A quaker? Sly; A presbyterian? Sour;
A smart free-thinker? All things in an hour.
Pope's Moral Essays.
She taught the child to read, and taught so well,
That she herself, by teaching, learn'd to spell.
Byron's Sketch from Private Life.
'Tis pleasing to be school'd in a strange tongue
By female lips and eyes—that is, I mean
When both the teacher and the taught are young,
As was the case at least where I have been;
They smile so when one 's right, and when one's
wrong
Culture's hand Has scatter'd verdure o'er the land; And smiles and fragrance rule serene, Where barren wild usurp'd the scene. And such is mana soil which breeds Or sweetest flowers, or vilest weeds; Flowers lovely as the morning's light, Weeds deadly as an aconite; Just as his heart is train'd to bear The poisonous weed, or flow'ret fair.
Sweete words, like dropping honey, she did shed;
Byron. And 'twixt the perles and rubies softly brake
A silver sound, that heavenly musicke seem'd to
make.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
Her words were like a stream of honey fleeting,
The which doth softly trickle from the hive,
Able to melt the hearer's heart unweeting,
And eke to make the dead again alive.
A little learning is a dangerous thing,
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring,
For shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
But drinking largely sobers us again.
Pope's Essay on Criticism.
Learning by study must be won;
'Twas ne'er entail'd from sire to son.
And say to mothers what a holy charge
Is theirs with what a kingly power their love
Might rule the fountains of the new-born mind;
Warn them to wake at early dawn, and sow
Good seed before the world has sown its tares.
Mrs. Sigourney.
Look through the casement of yon village school,
Where now the pedant with his oaken rule,
Sits like Augustus on the imperial throne,
Between two poets yet to fame unknown.
James T. Fields. One while the fever is to learn what none will be wiser for knowing,
Pow'r above pow'rs! O heavenly eloquence!
That with the strong rein of commanding words,
Dost manage, guide, and master th' eminence
Of men's affections, more than all their swords!
Shall we not offer to thy excellence
The richest treasure that our wit affords?
Thou that canst do much more with one pen,
Than all the pow'rs of princes can effect;
And draw, divert, dispose, and fashion men,
Better than force or rigour can direct!
Should we this ornament of glory then,
As th' unmaterial fruits of shades neglect?
Men are more eloquent than women made; But women are more pow'rful to persuade.
What is judicious eloquence to those
Whose speech not up to other's reason grows,
But climbs aloft to their own passion's height?
And as our seamen make no use of sight
By any thing observ'd in wide strange seas,
But only of the length of voyages;
Or else, as men in races make no stay
To draw large prospects of their breath away.
So they, in heedless races of the tongue,
Exploded errors in extinct tongues, and occasions Care not how broad their theme is, out how long
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