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. Goldsmith's Deserted Village.
Yes, let the rich deride, the proud disdain, These simple blessings of the lowly train; To me more dear, congenial to my heart, One native charm, than all the gloss of art; Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway; Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined.
But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade, With all the freaks of wanton wealth array'd, In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain, The toiling pleasure sickens into pain; And, e'en while passion's brightest arts decoy, The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy? Goldsmith's Deserted Village.
Unknown to them, when sensual pleasures cloy, To fill the languid pause with finer joy; Unknown those pow'rs that raise the soul to flame, Catch ev'ry nerve, and vibrate through the frame. Their level life is but a mould'ring fire, Unquench'd by want, unfann'd by strong desire; Unfit for raptures, or, if raptures cheer, On some high festival of once a year, In wild excess the vulgar breast takes fire, Till, buried in debauch, the bliss expire.
Goldsmith's Traveller. Far from the madd'ning crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool sequester'd vale of life They kept the noiseless tenour of their way. Gray's Churchyard. November chill blows loud wi' angry sugh; The short'ning winter-day draws near a close; The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh; The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose: The toil-worn cotter frae his labour goes, This night his weekly moil is at an end, Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, Hoping the morn at ease and rest to spend, And weary, o'er the moor, his course does home- ward bend.
Burns' Cotter's Saturday Night.
Right of voice in framing laws, Right of peers to try each cause; Peasant homestead, mean and sinall, Sacred as the monarch's hall.
Contentment opes the source of every joy. He envied not, he never thought of kings; Nor from those appetites sustain'd annoy, That chance may frustrate, or indulgence cloy; Nor fate his calm and humble hope beguil'd; He mourn'd no recreant friend, nor mistress coy! For on his vows the blameless Phoebe smil'd, And her alone he lov'd, and lov'd her from a child. Beattie's Minstrel.
Let luxury, sickening in profusion's chair, Unwisely pamper his unworthy heir; And while he feeds him, blush and tremble too, But, Love and Labour, blush not, fear not you. Your children, (splinters from the mountain's side,) With rugged hands, shall for themselves providc. Parent of valour, cast away thy fear; Mother of men, be proud without a tear! While round your hearth the woe-nurs'd virtues move,
All, all that manliness can ask of love; Remember Hogarth, and abjure despair, Remember Arkwright, and the peasant Clare. Ebenezer Elliott.
Oh! nature's noblest gift-my grey goose quill: Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will, Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen, That mighty instrument of little men!
Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. Ye safe and formal men, Who write the deeds, and with unfeverish hand Weigh in nice scales the motives of the great, Ye cannot know what ye have never tried. Bulwer's Richelieu. Beneath the rule of men entirely great, The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold The arch enchanter's wand! itself a nothing! But taking sorcery from the master hand, To paralyze the Cæsars, and to strike The loud earth breathless!
In days of yore, the poet's pen
From wing of bird was plunder'd, Perhaps of goose, but now and then,
From Jove's own eagle sunder'd. But now, metallic pens disclose Alone the poet's numbers; In iron inspiration glows, Or with the poet slumbers.
PERFECTION-PERSEVERANCE-PHILANTHROPY.
The poet's pen is the true divining rod
Which trembles towards the inner founts of feeling; Bringing to light and use, else hid from all, The many sweet clear sources which we have Of good and beauty in our own deep bosoms; And marks the variations of all mind As does the needle.
I would not have my pen pursue
The "beaten track"-a slave for ever;
No! roam as thou wert wont to do
In author-land, by rock and river. Be like the sunbeam's burning wing, Be like the wand in Cinderella, And if you touch a common thing,
Ah! change to gold the pumpkin yellow! May grace come fluttering round your steps, Whene'er, my bird, you light on paper, And music murmur at your lips,
And truth restrain each truant caper. Mrs. Osgood's Poems.
Be tun'd to tenderest music when
Of sin and shame thou 'rt sadly singing;
But diamond be thy point, my pen,
When folly's bells are round thee ringing! Mrs. Osgood's Poems. - Forc'd to drudge for the dregs of men,
In war or peace, who his great purpose yields, He is the only villain of this world:
But he who labours firm and gains his point, Be what it will, which crowns him with success He is the son of fortune and of fame; By those admir'd, those specious villains most, That else had bellow'd out reproach against him. Thomson's Agamemnor
Perseverance is a Roman virtue, That wins each god-like act, and plucks success E'en from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger. Havard's Regulus.
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, The proudest motto for the young!
And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are busy and loud.
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
Write it in lines of gold Upon thy heart, and in thy mind
The stirring words enfold; And in misfortune's dreary hour, Or fortune's prosperous gale, "T will have a holy, cheering power · "There's no such word as fail!"
Press on! for it is godlike to unloose The spirit, and forget yourself in thought; Bending a pinion for the deeper sky,
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, And, in the very fetters of your flesh,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
Shaks. King John. Nature, in her productions, slow, aspires By just degrees to reach perfection's height. Somerville's Chase.
The growth of what is excellent, so hard 'I' attain perfection in this nether world.
I et other bards of angels sing,
Mating with the pure essences of heaven! Press on! "for in the grave there is no work, And no device."-Press on! while yet you may! Willis's Poems. Stick to your aim; the mongrel's hold will
But only crow-bars loose the bull-dog's lip; Small as he looks, the jaw that never yields
Cowper's Task. Drags down the bellowing monarch of the fields.
Bright suns without a spot; But thou art no such perfect thing: Rejoice that thou art not!
Wordsworth. PHILANTHROPY.-(See KINDNESS.)
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger, To sound what stop she please: give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of hearts, As I do thee. Something too much of this. Shaks. Hamlet.
His notions fitted things so well, That which was which he could not tell; But oftentimes mistook the one
For th' other, as great clerks have done. He could reduce all things to acts, And knew their natures by abstracts; Where entity and quiddity,
The ghosts and defunct bodies fly; Where truth in person does appear, Like words congeal'd in northern air.
Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense, Weigh thy opinion against Providence ; Call imperfection what thou fanciest such; Say, here he gives too little, there too much: Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust, Yet say, if man's unhappy, God's unjust. Pope's Essay on Man
There are more things in heaven and earth, In lazy apathy let Stoics boast
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Is very snow broth; one who never feels The wanton stings and motions of the sense: But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge With profits of the mind, study and fast.
Their virtue fix'd; 'tis fix'd as in a frost; Contracted all, returning to the breast; But strength of mind is exercise, not rest: The rising tempest puts in act the soul; Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole. Pope's Essay on Man Philosophy consists not
In airy schemes, or idle speculations: Shaks. Mea. for Mea. The rule and conduct of all social life
Is her great province. Not in lonely cells Obscure she lurks, but holds her heavenly light To senates and to kings, to guide their councils, And teach them to reform and bless mankind. Thomson's Coriolanus
Deluded man! who, fondly proud of reason, Think'st that thy crazy nature's privilege, Which is thy great tormentor! senseless fools, In stupid dulness bless'd, are only happy; They feel no threat'ning evils at a distance: Never reflect on their past miseries: Their solid comfort is their want of sense. But reason is the tyrant of the mind; Awakes our thoughts to all our cares and griefs; Distracts our hopes, and in a thousand shapes Presents our fears to multiply our woes.
Smith's Princess of Parma.
Reason! the hoary dotard's dull directress, That loses all because she hazards nothing: Reason! tim'rous pilot, that, to shun The rocks of life, for ever flies the port.
O, then, if earth's united power Can never chain one feathery hour; If every print we leave to-day, To-morrow's wave shall steal away; Who pauses, to inquire of Heaven Why were the fleeting treasures given, The sunny days, the shady nights, And all their brief but dear delights, Which Heaven has made for man to use, And man should think it guilt to lose? Who, that has cull'd a weeping rose, Will ask it why it breathes and glows, Unmindful of the blushing ray, In which it shines its soul away; Unmindful of the scented sigh, On which it dies and loves to die!
Oh! who that has ever had rapture complete, Would ask how we feel it, or why it is sweet; How rays are confus'd, or how particles fly Through the medium refin'd of a glance or a sigh! Is there one, who but once would not rather have known it,
Than written, with Harvey, whole volumes upon it? Moore.
There is a calm upon me- Inexplicable stillness! which till now Did not belong to what I know of life. If that I did not know philosophy To be of all our vanities the motliest, The merest word that ever fool'd the ear From out the schoolman's jargon, I should deem The golden secret, the sought "Kalon" found, And seated in my soul.
Some talk of an appeal unto some passion, Some to men's feelings, others to their reason; The last of these was never much the fashion, For reason thinks all reasoning out of season. Byron.
Ah, yes, Philosopher, thy creed is true! 'Tis our own eyes that give the rainbow's hue; What we call MATTER in this outer earth, Takes from our senses, those warm dupes, its birth. How fair, to sinless Adam, Eden smil'd! But sin brought tears, and Eden was a wild! Man's soul is as an everlasting dream, Glassing life's fictions on a phantom stream: To-day, in glory all the world is clad- Wherefore, O Man ?-because thy heart is glad! To-morrow, and the self-same scene survey- The same! Oh! no-the pomp hath pass'd away! Wherefore the change Within, go ask reply— Thy heart hath given its winter to the sky! Vainly the world revolves upon its pole ;- Light-Darkness-Seasons-these are in the soul! Bulwer's Poems.
Yes, vain philosophy, thine hour is come! Thy lips were lin'd with the immortal lie, And dyed with all the look of truth. Men saw, Believ'd, embrac'd, detested, cast thee off. Those lights, the morn of Truth's immortal day, As thou didst falsely swear them, have they not Vanish'd, the mere auroras of the mind? And thou didst vow to gather clear again The fallen waters of humanity;
To smooth the flaw from out the eye, to piece A pounded pearl. Thank God! I am a man; Not a philosopher! Bailey's Festus.
If this familiar spirit that communes With yours this hour-that has the power to
All things but its own compass is a spark Struck from the burning essence of its God- If, when these weary organs drop away, We shall forget their uses, and commune With angels and each other, as the stars Mingle their light in silence and in love- What is this fleshy fetter of a day, That we should crown it with immortal flowers? Willis's Poems.
Philosophy and Reason! Oh, how vain Their lessons to the feelings! They but teach To hide them deeper, and to show a calm Unruffled surface to the idle gaze.
Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it. Shaks. Macbeth.
If thou could'st, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease, And purge it to a sound and pristine health, I would applaud thee to the very echo, That should applaud again.
Shaks. Macbeth. What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug Would scour these English hence? Hearest thou of them? Shaks. Macbeth.
I do remember an apothecary,
Miss Elizabeth Bogart. And hereabouts he dwells,-whom late I noted In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows, Culling of simples; meagre were his looks, Sharp misery had worn him to the bones. Shaks. Romeo and Juliet
For of the soul the body form doth take; For soul is form, and doth the body make.
A beggarly account of empty boxes Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds, Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses Were thinly scattered to make up a show.
Shaks. Romeo and Juliet.
Wounds by wider wounds are heal'd, And poisons by themselves expell'd.
Knew many an amulet and charm, That would do neither good nor harm.
For men are brought to worse distresses By taking physic than diseases; And therefore commonly recover, As soon as doctors give them over.
So, when small humours gather to a gout, The doctor fancies he has driv'n them out. Pope's Essay on Man.
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