LEWDNESS. LIBERALITY. LIBERTINE. 399 LEWDNESS. IF the muse lavish her immortal wit To paint a fading face, And the firm diamond, the frail honours writ Let no foul word pollute that heavenly ray Lewdness would taint the sunbeams in their way. Lewdness should ne'er be read but when keen lightnings play, To blast the writer's hand, and shake his soul with fear. Watts. LIBERALITY. HE that's liberal To all alike, may do a good by chance, But never out of judgment. Beaumont and Fletcher. For whose well-being, So amply and with hands so liberal Such moderation with thy bounty join, Milton. That thou may'st nothing give that is not thine; Which makes us borrow what we cannot pay. Denham. LIBERTINE. 1.-FIE on thee-I can tell what thou would'st do. For thou thyself hast been a libertine, Shakspere. THIS is true liberty, when free-born men, Having to advise the public, may speak out; Which he who can and will, deserves high praise; Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace. What can be juster in a state than this? Nations will decline so low Euripides. From virtue, which is reason, that no wrong Oh, give me liberty! For were even Paradise my prison, Still I would long to leap the crystal walls. Milton. Dryden. O Liberty! the prisoner's pleasing dream, In Afric's torrid clime, or India's fiercest heat. Cowper. Mild, like all strength, sits crowned Liberty, Let me not see the patriot's high bequest, Bulwer. Keats. LICENTIOUSNESS. LIE. 401 LICENTIOUSNESS. LATER age's pride, like corn-fed steed, The measure of her mean and natural first need. How would it touch thee to the quick The Tiber, whose licentious waves Spenser. Shakspere. So often overflowed the neighbouring fields, Roscommon. LIE. Go, soul, the body's guest, For truth shall be thy warrant; Let falsehood be a stranger to thy lips. Raleigh. To tamper with the heart to hide its thoughts! Havard. When fiction rises pleasing to the eye, The man of pure and simple heart Churchill. Gay. The day will come when thou must give account Anon. LIFE's but a walking shadow; a poor player Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Shakspere. When I consider life, 't is all a cheat: Love, Hope, and Joy, fair Pleasure's smiling train, Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until death tramples it to atoms. Shelley. What's Life? at best a wandering_breath; When happiest, but a summer wreath- Life is like yon fisher's boat- On life's ocean thus we float Croly. W. H. Leatham. LET there be light! God said, and forthwith light Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure, Sprung from the deep; and, from her native east, To journey through the airy gloom began, Sphered in a radiant cloud. Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; Milton. God said, let Newton be! and all was light.-Pope. All the world's bravery, that delights our eyes, Thou the rich dye on them bestow'st, Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou go'st. A crown of studded gold thou bear'st; Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light. Light-from whose rays all beauty springs, Cowley. Praise Him, who, when the heavens he spread, And light his regal robe. Dark, dark, yea, irrecoverably dark, Merrick. Is the soul's eye, yet how it strives and battles A. H. Hallam. From the quickened womb of the primal gloom Till I wove him a vest for his Ethiope breast, And when the broad tent of the firmament I pencilled the hue of its matchless blue, And spangled it o'er with stars. W. P. Palmer. |