No distinction is 'tween man and man,
But as his virtues add to him a glory,
Or vices cloud him.
Have caught it as it flew, and mark'd it deep
With something great; extremes of good or ill.
Young's Busiris,
Habbington's Queen of Arragon. If any white-winged power above
Put off your giant titles, then I can
Stand in your judgment's blank and equal man,
Though hills advanced are above the plain,
They are but higher earth, nor must disdain
Alliance with the vale: we sce a spade
Can level them, and make a mount a glade.
Howe'er we differ in the herald's book,
He that mankind's extraction shall look
In nature's rolls, must grant we all agree
In our best parts, immortal pedigree.
Dr. Henry King, Bishop of Chichester.
Let high birth triumph! what can be more great?
Nothing-but merit in a low estate.
To virtue's humblest son let none prefer
Vice, though descended from the Conqueror.
Shall man, like figures, pass for high, or base,
Slight or important, only by their place?
Titles are marks of honest men, and wise;
The fool, or knave, that wears a title, lies.
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I have had dreams of greatness, glorious dreams,
How I would play the lord!-How I would spurn
'The littleness of that false pride which seeks
To build on pedigree its high renown:-
How I would lend my influence to suppress
The haughtiness of titled rank, and teach
That brain, not blood was proof of noble birth.
Mrs. Hale's Grosvenor; a Tragedy.
I've learned to judge of men by their own deeds,
I do not make the accident of birth
The standard of their merit.
Mrs. Hale's Grosvenor.
-He was poor and lowly born, and lived
Where merit must be heralded by birth,
Or bought with gold.
My joys and griefs survey,
The day when thou wert born, my love,
He surely blessed that day.
And duly shall my raptured song,
And gladly shall my eyes
Still bless this day's return, so long
As thou shalt see it rise.
Another year! another leaf
Is turned within life's volume brief,
And yet not one bright page appears
Of mine within that book of years.
Yet all I've learnt from hours rife
With painful brooding here,
Is, that amid this mortal strife,
The lapse of every year
But takes away a hope from life,
And adds to death a fear.
Why should we count our life by years,
Since years are short, and pass away!
Or, why by fortune's smiles or tears,
Since tears are vain and smiles decay!
O! count by virtues-these shall last
When life's lame-footed race is o'er;
And these, when earthly joys are past,
May cheer us on a brighter shore.
My heart is with thee o'er the seas.
My birthday! O, beloved mother!
I did not think to count another,
Before I wept upon thy knees.
I thought the way to death had been so broad,
Tho' I were blind, I could not miss the road:
Death's lodgings such perpetual darkness have,
And I seem nothing but a walking grave.
Sir Robert Howard's Vestal Virgin
O happiness of blindness! now no beauty
Mrs. Hale's Grosvenor. Inflames my lust; no other's good my envy;
Or misery, my pity; no man's wealth
Draws my respect; nor poverty my scorn
Yet still I see enough! man to himself
Is a large prospect, rais'd above the level
Of his low creeping thoughts; if then I have
A world within myself, that world shall be
first gave me birth, and (which is strange to tell) The fates e'er since, as watching its return,
My empire; there I'll reign, commanding freely,
And willingly obey'd, secure from fear
Of foreign forces, or domestic treasons,
And hold a monarchy more free, more absolute,
Than in my father's seat; and looking down
With scorn, or pity, on the slipp'ry state
Of kings, will tread upon the neck of fate.
Denham's Sophy.
These eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their sceing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In liberty's defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
This might lead me through the world's vain mask
Content, though blind, had I no better guide.
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeons or beggary or decrepid age!
Light, the prime work of God, to me's extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annull'd which might in part my grief have eas'd.
Milton's Samson Agonistes.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrevocably dark, total eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first created beam, and thou great word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;
Why am I thus bereav'd the prime decree?
Milton's Samson Agonistes.
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with an universal blank
Of nature's works to me expung'd and ras'd,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
Milton's Paradise Lost.
Ye have a world of light,
Where love in the loved rejoices;
But the blind man's home is the house of night,
And its beings are empty voices.
I ken the night and day,
For all ye may believe,
And often in my spirit lies
A clear light as of mid-day skies;
And splendours on my vision rise,
Like gorgeous hues of eve.
For oh! while others gaze on Nature's face,
The verdant vale, the mountains, woods and
streams,
Or with delight ineffable survey
The sun,-bright image of his parent God;-
Whilst others view Heaven's all-involving arch,
Bright with unnumber'd worlds, and lost in joy,
Fair order and utility behold;—
To me those fair vicissitudes are lost,
And grace and beauty blotted from my view.
Dr. Thomas Blacklock,
Thou walk 'st the world in daily night:
In vain they gleam, in vain for thee,
The morn upon the mountain height,
The golden sunset on the sea.
He, whom Nature thus bereaves,
Is ever Fancy's favourite child;
For thee, enchanted dreams she weaves
Of changeful beauty, bright and wild.
Who, having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb,
Quite from his nature: he can't flatter, he!-
An honest mind and plain, he must speak truth:
An they will take it, so; if not, he's plain.
These kind of knaves I know, which in this plain
I'll turn two mincing steps
Into a manly stride; and speak of frays
For men (it is reported) dash and vapour Less on the field of battle than on paper.
Like a fine bragging youth; and tell quaint lies, Thus in the hist'ry of each dire campaign
To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,
And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman
Be not, as is our fangled word, a garment
Of guns, and drums, and wounds (God save the Nobler than that it covers.
And telling me, the sovereign'st thing on earth
Was parmacity, for an inward bruise;
And that it was great pity, so it was,
This villanous saltpetre should be digg'd
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
So cowardly and but for these wild guns,
He would himself have been a soldier.
A gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh,
A boar-spear in my hand; and (in my heart
Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will)
We'll have a swashing and a martial outside;
As many other mannish cowards have,
That do outface it with their semblances.
Here is a silly, stately style indeed!
The Turk that two and fifty kingdoms hath,
Writes not so tedious a style as this.
Calling their victorics, if unjustly got,
Unto a strict account; and in my fancy,
Deface their ill-plac'd statues. Can I then
Part with such constant pleasures, to embrace
Shaks. Henry IV. Uncertain vanities? No: be it your care
"Twere well with most, if books, that could engage
Their childhood, pleas'd them at a riper age;
The man approving what had charm'd the boy,
Would die at last in comfort, peace, and joy;
And not with curses on his art, who stole
The gem of truth from his unguarded soul.
Cowper. Books are men of higher stature, And the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear! Miss Barrett's Poems. Come let me make a sunny realm around thee, Of thought and beauty!-Here are books and flowers,
What you desire of him, he partly begs
To be desir'd to give. It much would please him
That of his fortunes you would make a staff
To lean upon.
Shaks. Antony and Cleopatra.
For his bounty,
There was no winter in 't; an autumn 't was
That grew the more by reaping.
Shaks. Antony and Cleopatra.
O blessed bounty, giving all content!
The only fautress of all noble arts,
With spells to loose the fetters which hath bound That lend'st success to every good intent,
Charles Sprague. What he has written seems to me no more Than I have thought a thousand times before.
We never speak our deepest feelings;
Our holiest hopes have no revealings,
Save in the gleams that light the face,
Or fancies that the pen may trace.
And hence to books the heart must turn
When with unspoken thoughts we yearn,
And gather from the silent page
The just reproof, the counsel sage,
The consolation kind and true
Since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.
"Tis of books the chief Of all perfections to be plain and brief.
Stop not, unthinking, every friend you meet To spin your wordy fabric in the street; While you are emptying your colloquial pack, The fiend Lumbago jumps upon his back.
That soothes and heals the wounded heart.
Mrs. Hale's Vigil of Love.
I there's a fever of the soul Beyond this opiate control,
That struck the foremost man of all this world, But for supporting robbers;-shall we now Mrs. Hale's Vigil of Love. Contaminate our fingers with base bribes?
When the Dook charm its influence loses.
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