SCRIBBLE. SCULPTURE. SCURRILITY.
SCRIBBLE.
LEAVE flattery to fulsome dedicators,
Whom when they praise the world believes no more,
Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er.
Pope.
Laugh when I laugh, I seek no other fame,
The cry is up, and scribblers are my game. Byron.
Hot, noisy, envious, proud, the scribbling fry
Burn, hiss, and bounce; waste paper, ink; and die.
Young.
SCULPTURE.
CHISEL in hand, stood a sculptor boy,
With his marble block before him,
And his face lit up with a smile of joy,
As an angel dream passed o'er him;
He carved the dream on that shapeless stone,
With many a sharp incision;
With Heaven's own light the sculpture shone;
He had caught the angel vision.
Sculptors of life are we, as we stand
With our souls uncarved before us;
Waiting the hour when, at God's command,
The life-dream passeth o'er us.
If we carve it then on the yielding stone,
With many a sharp incision,
Its heavenly beauty shall be our own,
Our lives that angel vision.
SCURRILITY.
You must not think that a satyric style
Allows of scandalous and brutish words;
The better sort abhor scurrility.
The license of the tongue-scurrility!
Bred of malicious thoughts within the heart,
And ripened into fruitage by the breath
Of hot contention.
SEA.
EACH small breath
Disturbs the quiet of poor shallow waters;
But winds must arm themselves, ere the large sea
Is seen to tremble.
Habbington.
Thou boundless, shining, glorious sea!
With ecstasy I gaze on thee;
And, as I gaze, thy billowy roll
Wakes the deep feelings of my soul!
The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth's wide region round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.
And thou majestic mighty main
Appear'st from changes so free,
That bards have styled thee in their strain
The everlasting sea.
Type of the Infinite! I look away Over thy billows, and I cannot stay My thought upon a resting-place, or make A shore beyond my vision, where they break; But on my spirit stretches, till it's pain To think; then rests, and then puts forth again. Thou hold'st me by a spell; and on thy beach I feel all soul; and thoughts unmeasured reach Far back beyond all date. And, O! how old Thou art to me. For countless years thou hast rolled: Before an ear did hear thee, thou didst mourn; Prophet of sorrows, o'er a race unborn; Waiting, thou mighty minister of death, Lonely thy work, ere man had drawn his breath. At last thou didst it well! The dread command Came, and thou swept'st to death the breathing land; And then once more, unto the silent heaven Thy lone and melancholy voice was given. Dana.
SEASONS.
THE crow does sing as sweetly as the lark,
When neither is attended; and, I think,
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.
How many things by season season'd are
To their right praise, and true perfection!
Perceivest thou not the process of the year,
How the four seasons in four forms appear?
Like human life in every shape they wear:
Spring first, like infancy, shoots out her head,
With milky juice requiring to be fed......
Proceeding onward, whence the year began,
The summer grows adult, and ripens into man......
Autumn succeeds, a sober, tepid age,
Nor froze with fear, nor boiling into rage;
Last, winter creeps along with tardy pace,
Sour is his front, and furrow'd is his face.
Dryden, from Ovid.
Thus for all things in the world's prime,
The wise God seal'd their proper time,
Nor will permit those seasons, He
Ordained by turns, should mingled be.
Then whose wild actions out of season,
Cross to nature and her reason,
Would by new ways old orders rend,
Shall never find a happy end.
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drop's fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon.
SELF-SELFISHNESS.
-HONOUR is the subject of my story.
I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but, for my single self,
I had as lief not be, as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself.
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs
Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas,
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,
Than Cæsar with the senate at his heels.
And though all cry down self, none means
His own self in a literal sense.
The selfish heart deserves the pain it feels;
More generous sorrow, while it sinks, exalts,
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang.
How often, in this cold and bitter world,
Is the warm heart thrown back upon itself!
Cold, careless are we of another's grief;
We wrap ourselves in sullen selfishness.
But och! mankind are unco weak,
And little to be trusted;
If self the wavering balance shake,
It's rarely right adjusted.
Selfishness:-Toy-bewitch'd,
Made blind by lusts, disherited of soul,
No common centre Man, no common sire
Knoweth! A sordid, solitary thing,
'Mid countless brethren with a lonely heart,
Through courts and cities the smooth savage roams,
Feeling himself, his own low self the whole;
When he by sacred sympathy might make
The whole one self. Self, that no alien knows!
Self, far diffused as Fancy's wing can travel!
Self, spreading still! oblivious of its own,
Yet all of all possessing.
SELF-EXAMINATION-GOVERNMENT-LOVE.
SELF-EXAMINATION.
LET not soft slumber close my eyes,
Ere I have recollected thrice,
The train of actions through the day.
Where have my feet marked out their way?
What have I learnt where'er I've been,
From all I've heard, from all I've seen?
What know I more that's worth the knowing?
What have I done that's worth the doing?
What have I sought that I should shun?
What duties have I left undone?
Or into what new follies run?
These self-inquiries are the road
That leads to virtue and to God!
SELF-GOVERNMENT.
NOR happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,
Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,
History is but the shadow of their shame,
Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts,
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet,
Staining that heaven with obscure imagery
Of their own likeness. What! are members knit
By force or custom? Man, who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquish'd will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears-being himself alone.
SELF-LOVE.
SELF-LOVE but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake;
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another speeds;
Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace,
Its country next-next the whole human race.-Pope.
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