Oh! that some villager, whose early toil
Lifts the penurious morsel to his mouth,
Had claim'd my birth! ambition had not thea
Thus step'd 'twixt me and heav'n.

Brooke's Gustavus Vasa.
Ambition is at a distance

A goodly prospect, tempting to the view;
The height delights us, and the mountain top
Looks beautiful, because 't is nigh to heaven:
But we ne'er think how sandy's the foundation;
What storms will batter, and what tempests shake

Like eastern kings, a lazy state they keep,
And, close confin'd to their own palace, sleep.

Pope.

The gods, to curse Pamela with her pray'rs,
Gave the gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares,
The shining robes, rich jewels, beds of state,
And to complete her bliss,-a fool for mate.
She glares in balls, front boxes, and the ring,
A vain, unquiet, glittering, wretched thing!-
Pride, pomp, and state, but reach her outward
part;

Otway's Venice Preserved. She sighs,-and is no duchess at her heart.
Pope.

Why now my golden dream is out
Ambition, like an early friend, throws back
My curtains with an eager hand, o'erjoyed
To tell me what I dreamt is true-a crown,
Thou bright reward of ever-daring minds;
Oh! how thy awful glory fills my soul!
Nor can the means that got thee dim thy lustre;
For, not men's love, fear pays thee adoration,
And fame not more survives from good than evil

By nature half divine, soar to the stars,
And hold a near acquaintance with the gods.
Rowe's Royal Convert.
What is ambition but desire of greatness?
And what is greatness but extent of power?
But lust of power's a dropsy of the mind,
Whose thirst increases, while we drink to quench it,
'Till swoln and stretch'd by the repeated draught,
We burst and perish.

Higgon's Generous Conqueror.
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes,
The glorious fault of angels and of gods;
Thence to their images on earth it flows,
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows.
Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull suilen pris'ners in the body's cage;
Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years
Useless unsec... as lamps in sepulchres;

Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains pil'd on mountains, to the skies?
Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
Pope's Essay on Man.
Unnumber'd suppliants crowd preferment's gate
Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great,
Delusive fortune hears the incessant call,
They mount, they shine,-evaporate and fall.

Dr. Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes,
This sov'reign passion, scornful of restraint,
Even from the birth affects supreme command,
Swells in the breast, and with resistless force,
O'erbears each gentler motion of the mind.
Dr. Johnson's Irene.

Alas! ambition makes my little less:
Embitt'ring the possess'd: why wish for more?
Wishing, of all employments, is the worst;
Philosophy's reverse, and health's decay!

Young's Night Thoughts.
Thy bosom burns for power;
What station charms thee? I'll install thee there;
'Tis thine. And art thou greater than before?
Then thou before wast something less than man.
Has thy new post betray'd thee into pride?
That treach'rous pride betrays thy dignity,
That pride defames humanity, and calls
The being mean, which staffs or strings can raise.
Young's Night Thoughts
Not kings alone,

Each villager has his ambition too;
No sultan prouder than his fetter'd slave:
Slaves build their little Babylons of straw,
Echo the proud Assyrian in their hearts,
And
cry-"
-"Behold the wonders of my might!"
And why? because immortal as their lord;
And souls immortal must for ever heave
At something great; the glitter or the gold
The praise of mortals or the praise of Heaven.
Young's Night Thoughts.

On the summit see,

The seals of office glitter in his eyes;

You have deeply ventured,
But all must do so who would greatly win.
Byron's Doge of Venice.
Ay,-father!-I have had those earthly visions
And noble aspirations in my youth,
To make my own the mind of other men,
The enlightener of nations: and to rise
I knew not whither-it might be to fall;
But fall, even as the mountain cataract,
Which having leapt from its more dazzling height,
Even in the foaming strength of its abyss,
Lies low but mighty still.-But this is past,
My thoughts mistook themselves.

Byron's Manfred.

He climbs,―he pants,-he grasps them. At his He who ascends to mountain tops, shall find

Is it delusion this?
Or wears the mind of man within itself
A conscious feeling of its destination?
What say these suddenly imposed thoughts,
Which mark such deepen'd traces in the brain
On vivid real persuasion, as do make
My nerved foot tread firmer on the earth,
And my dilating form tower on its way?
Joanna Baillie's Ethwald.
I am as one

The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above, the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath, the earth and ocean spread;
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,
And thus reward the toils which to those summits
Byron's Childe Horold.

led.

But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,
And there hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion in the soul which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire,
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And but once kindled, quenchless evermore
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire

Who doth attempt some lofty mountain's height, Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,

And having gained what to the upcast eye
The summit's point appear'd, astonish'd sees
Its cloudy top, majestic and enlarged,
Towering aloft, as distant as before.

Joanna Baillie's Ethwald.

Fatal to him who bears,-to all who ever bore.
This makes the madmen, who have made men mad
By their contagion, conquerors and kings,
Founders of sects and systems, to whom add
Sophists, bards, statesmen, all unquiet things
Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs,
And are themselves the fools to those they fool;
Envied, yet not enviable! what stings
Joanna Baillie's Ethwald. Are theirs! one breast laid open were a school
Which would unteach mankind, the lust to shine
Byron's Childe Harold

It ever is the marked propensity
Of restless and aspiring minds to look
Into the stretch of dark futurity.

To th' expanded and aspiring soul,
To be but still the thing it long has been,
Is misery, e'en though enthron'd it were
Under the cope of high imperial state.

Joanna Baillie's Ethwald.

The cheat, ambition, eager to espouse
Dominion, courts it with a lying show,
And shines in borrow'd pomp to serve a turn:
But the match made, the farce is at an end;

or rule.

Their breath is agitation, and their life
A storm whereon they ride to sink at last,
And yet so nurs'd and bigoted to strife,
That should their days, surviving perils past,
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast
With sorrow and supineness, and so die;
Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste

Rights cheaply earn'd with blood. Still, still, Shelter her in the tempest, warring wild:

And thou, my Country, thou shalt never fall
But with thy children.

For they are strong supporters; but, till then,
The greatest are but growing gentlemen.

Bryant's Poems. It is a wretched thing to trust to reeds;

There is no other land like thee,

No dearer shore;

Thou art the shelter of the free,
The home, the port of liberty,
Thou hast been, and shalt ever be,
Till time is o'er.

Ere I forget to think upon

My land, shall mother curse the son
She bore.

Land of the forest and the rock,

Percival's Poems.

Of dark blue lake and mighty river,
Of mountains reared on high to mock
The storm's career and lightning's shock,
My own green Land for ever!
Oh! never may a son of thine,
Where'er his wandering feet incline,
Forget the sky that bent above
His childhood like a dream of love!

I see the living tide roll on,

It crowns with fiery towers

The icy capes of Labrador,

The Spaniard's "land of flowers!"
It streams beyond the splintered ridge
That parts the northern showers,
From eastern rock to sunset wave,
The Continent is ours.

Whittier.

I have no urns, no dusty monuments;
No broken images of ancestors,
Wanting an ear, or nose; no forged tables
Of long descents, to boast false honours from.
Jonson's Catiline

"Tis poor and not becoming perfect gentry,
To build their glories at their fathers' cost;
But at their own expense of blood or virtue,
To raise them living monuments; our birth
Is not our own act; honour upon trust,
Our ill deeds forfeit; and the wealthy sums,
Purchas'd by others' fame or sweat, will be
Our stain, for we inherit nothing truly
But what our actions make us worthy of.

Chapman and Shirley's Ball.

It is, indeed, a blessing, when the virtues
Of noble races are hereditary:
And do derive themselves from th' imitation

O. W. Holmes. Of virtuous ancestors.

America! the sound is like a sword
To smite th' oppressor! like a loving word
To cheer the suffering people, while they pray
That God would hasten on the promised day,
When earth shall be like heaven, and men shall
stand,

Like brothers round an altar, hand in hand.
O! ever thus, America, be strong,-

Nabb's Covent Garden.

He that to ancient wreaths can bring no more
From his own worth, dies bankrupt on the score.
John Cleveland.

They that on glorious ancestors enlarge,
Produce their debt, instead of their discharge.
Young.

He stands for fame on his forefathers' feet,

Like cataract's thunder pour the Freeman's song, By heraldry proved valiant or discreet!

Till struggling Europe joins the grand refrain;
And startled Asia bursts the despot's chain;
And Afric's manumitted sons, from thee
To their own Father-land shall bear the song,
-Worth all their toils and tears-of Liberty:
For these good deeds, America, be strong!

ANCESTRY.

Mrs. Hale.

Boast not these titles of your ancestors,

Whence his name

Young.

And lineage long, it suits me not to say;
Suffice it that, perchance they were of fame,
And had been glorious in another day.

Byron's Childe Harold.
I am one,

Who finds within me a nobility
That spurns the idle pratings of the great,
And their mean boast of what their fathers weic,

Brave youths; they 're their possessions, none of While they themselves are fools effeminate,

yours;

When your own virtues, equal'd have their names, "T will be but fair to lean upon their fames;

The scorn of all who know the worth of mind
And virtue.

Percival

ANGELS.

Thus they in heaven, above the starry sphere,
Their happy hours in joy and hymning spent.
Milton's Paradise Lost.
Angels, contented with their fame in heaven,
Seek not the praise of men.

Madness and anger differ but in this,
This is short madness, that long anger is.

Charles Aleyn's Crescey. Where there's

Power to punish, 'tis tyranny to rage;

Anger is no attribute of justice;

'Tis true she's painted with a sword, but looks

Milton's Paradise Lost. As if she held it not; though war be in
Her hand, yet peace dwells in her face.
Henry Killegrew's Conspiracy.
If I stay, my rage

Are ye for ever to your skies departed?
Oh! will ye visit this dim world no more?

Ye whose bright wings a solemn splendour darted
Through Eden's fresh and flowery shades of
yore?
Mrs. Hemans.

White-wing'd angels meet the child

On the vestibule of life.

Mrs. E. Oakes Smith,

Times of joy and times of woe,
Each an angel-presence know.

Mrs. E. Oakes Smith.

Will hurry me to mischief, better leave her
To certain ruin, than betray myself
To danger of it.

Clapthorne's Hollander.

The winds,

Imprison'd in the caverns of the earth,
Break out in hideous earthquakes; passions so
Increase by opposition of all scorns.

Clapthorne's Hollander.

Anger

ANGER.

Full many mischiefs follow cruel wrath:
Abhorred bloodshed, and tumultuous strife,
Unmanly murder, and unthrifty scath,
Bitter despite, with rancour's rusty knife,
And fretting grief, the enemy of life;
All these, and many evils more, haunt ire.
The sweelling spleen, and phrenzy raging rife,
The shaking palsy, and saint Francis fire:
Such one was wrath, the last of this ungodly tire.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.

There is not in nature,

Is blood, pour'd and perplex'd into a froth;
But malice is the wisdom of our wrath.

Sir W. Davenant's Just Italian.

In mighty souls, passions, not soon suppress'd,
Like wounded whales, do struggle till they die;
By their impatience they increase the smart,
Provoke their pains, and vex a harmless dart;
Tossing the mighty mass till they're on ground,
Their rage more fatal than the little wound.
Sir Francis Fane's Sacrifice,
At this the knight grew high in wrath,
And lifting hands and eyes up both,
Three times he smote on stomach stout,

A thing that makes a man so deform'd, so beastly, From whence at length these words broke out.
As doth intemp'rate anger.

Webster's Dutchess of Malfi.

Butler's Hudibras.

Anger is like

Your more manly soul I find A full hot horse, who being allow'd his way,

Is capable of wrong, and like a flint
Throws forth a fire unto the striker's eyes.
You bear about you valour's whetstone, anger:
Which sets an edge upon the sword, and makes it
Cut with a spirit; you conceive fond patience
Is an injustice to ourselves; the suff'ring
One injury invites a second, that
Calls on a third, till wrongs do multiply
And reputation bleed.

Thomas Randolph's Muse's Looking-Glass.
My cage is not malicious; like a spark
Of fire by steel inforced out of a flint,
I is no sooner kindled, but extinct.

Gaffe's Careless Shepherdess.