Bid thy true soul take courage for a space;
How can he yield his heart to pain or fear,
Whom at the end Joy waits, and smiling Morn?
Mary Elizabeth Blake.

I fear not, nay, and I fear not the thing to be
done;

I am strong with the strength of my lord the Sun: How dark, how dark soever the race that must needs be run,

I am lit with the Sun.

Sidney Lanier: Sunrise.

He gained a world; he gave that world

Its grandest lesson:

66 On! sail on! "

Joaquin Miller: Columbus.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Longfellow: A Psalm of Life.

Oh fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know erelong,
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.

Criticism, Critics.

Longfellow: Light of Stars.

A man must serve his time at ev'ry trade,
Save censure; critics all are ready-made.

Byron: English Bards.

I am nothing if not critical.

Shakespeare: Othello.

Critics I saw, that other names deface,

And fix their own, with labor, in their place.

Pope: Temple of Fame.

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer:
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.

Pope: Epistle to Arbuthnot.

Men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T' avoid great errors must the less commit.
Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays,
For not to know some trifles is a praise.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.

Numbers err in this

Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss.

Let such teach others, who themselves excel,
And censure freely, who have written well.

A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ;
Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find,
Where nature moves and rapture warms the mind.
Pope: Essay on Criticism.

Blame where you must, be candid where you can, And be each critic the Good-natured Man.

Goldsmith: The Good-Natured Man.

Custom, Convention; see Habit.

Custom, 'tis true, a venerable tyrant,

O'er servile man extends her blind dominion.

Thomson.

Custom does often reason overrule,

And only serves for reason to the fool.

Rochester.

How use doth breed a habit in a man!

Shakespeare: Two Gentlemen of Verona.

It is a custom,

More honor'd in the breach than the observance.

Shakespeare: Hamlet.

To follow foolish precedents, and wink

With both our eyes, is easier than to think.

Cowper: Tirocinium.

Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone
To rev'rence what is ancient, and can plead
A course of long observance for its use,
That even servitude, the worst of ills,
Because deliver'd down from sire to son,
Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing.

Danger, Caution; see Fear.

Cowper: Task.

Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.

Shakespeare: 1 Henry IV.

They that stand high have many blasts to shake

them,

And, if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.
Shakespeare: Richard III.

The absent danger greater still appears;

And less he fears, who's near the thing he fears.

Daniel.

But there are human natures so allied

Unto the savage love of enterprise,

That they will seek for peril as a pleasure.

Byron.

Dawn, Morning, Sunrise, Day.

The morning steals upon the night,

Melting the darkness.

Shakespeare: Tempest.

Look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,

Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill.

Shakespeare: Hamlet.

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops.

Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet.

Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds.

Milton: Paradise Lost.

Now Morn, her rosy steps in th' eastern clime
Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearl.

Milton: Paradise Lost.

See the sun himself! on wings

Of glory up the east he springs.
Angel of light! who from the time

Those heavens began their march sublime,
Hath first of all the starry choir

Trod in his Maker's steps of fire!

Moore: Lalla Rookh.

Wake! For the Sun, who scatters into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n.

Fitzgerald: Omar Khayyám: Rubáiyát.

Prime cheerer, light!

Of all material beings first and best!
Efflux divine! Nature's resplendent robe!
Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt
In unessential gloom; and thou, O sun!

Soul of surrounding worlds! in whom best seen
Shines out thy Maker!

Thomson: Seasons. Summer.

The year's at the spring

And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven.

Browning.

Day!

Faster and more fast,

O'er night's brim, day boils at last;
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim
Where spurting and suppress'd it lay—
For not a froth-flake touched the rim

Of yonder gap in the solid gray

Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;

But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be supprest,

Rose, reddened, and its seething breast

Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the

world.

Browning: Pippa Passes.