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SIN.

SIN.

OUR compell'd sins

Stand more for number than for account.-Shakspere.

Our sins, like to our shadows,

When our day's in its glory, scarce appear;
Towards our evening, how great and monstrous!
Suckling.

Nor custom, nor example, nor vast numbers
Of such as do offend, make less the sin.

For each particular crime, a strict account will be exacted; and that comfort which

The damned pretend, fellows in misery,
Takes nothing from their torments.

"Tis fearful building upon any sin;
One mischief enter'd, brings another in:

Massinger.

The second pulls a third, the third draws more,
And they for all the rest set ope the door:
Till custom take away the judging sense,

That to offend we think it no offence.

Sin is dark, and loves

The dark, still hiding from itself in gloom,
And in the darkest hell, is still itself

Smith.

The darkest hell, and the severest woe.

Pollok.

Thus oft it haps that when within
They shrink at sense of secret sin,
A feather daunts the brave;

A fool's wild speech confounds the wise,
And proudest princes veil their eyes
Before the meanest slave.

The Scriptures show

That God does suffer for the sins of those

Scott.

Whom He hath made, that are liable to sin;
In all of us He hath His agony. Henry Taylor.

Sin hath broke the world's sweet peace-unstrung
The harmonious chords to which the angels sung.

Dana.

SINCERITY.

SINEWY.

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SINCERITY.

BECAUSE I lie here at thy feet,

The humble booty of thy conquering eyes,
And lay my heart all open in thy sight,
And tell thee I am thine, and tell thee right;
And do not suit my looks, nor clothe my words
In other colours than my thoughts do wear,
But do thee right in all, thou scornest me,
As if thou didst not love sincerity.
Never did crystal more apparently

Present the colour it contain'd within,

Than have these eyes, these tears, this tongue of mine Bewray'd my heart, and told how much I'm thine.

Sincerity's my chief delight,

The darling pleasure of my mind;
O that I could to her invite
All the race of human kind!

Take her, mortals, she's worth more
Than all your glory, all your fame,
Than all your glittering boasted store,
Than all the things that you can name.
She'll with her bring a joy divine,
All that's good, and all that's fine.

Daniel.

Lady Chadleigh.

SINEWY.

AND for thy vigour,

Bull-bearing Milo his addition yields

To sinewy Ajax.

The sinewy thread my brain lets fall,

Through every part

Shakspere.

Can tie those parts, and make me one of all.

Dryden. The feeling power, which is life's root,

Through every living part itself doth shed By sinews, which extend from head to foot,

And like a net all o'er the body spread.-Davies.

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SINGING. SISTER.

SINGING.

ALAS! I know not what I have to say,
Yet I methinks could talk to you all day;
Tell you the mightiness of tyrant love,
And how I could from courts with you remove;
Could, like the humble lark, in my cold nest
Abroad all night in frosty meadows rest;
So I my vows to you, my star, might bring,
And every morning songs of sorrow sing.

Wherewith bestirs he human spirits?
Wherewith makes he the elements obey?

Nat. Lee.

Is 't not the stream of song that out his bosom springs, And to his heart the world back coiling brings?

Goethe.

'Tis not, I know, the chiming of a song,
Not all the powers that to the muse belong,
Words aptly cull'd, and meanings well express'd,
Can calm the sorrows of a wounded breast.

Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong,
And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song.

Crabbe.

Keats.

SISTER.

No love is like a sister's love,
Unselfish, free, and pure,-
A flame that lighted from above,
Will guide but ne'er allure.

It knows no frown of jealous fear,

No blush of conscious guile;

Its wrongs are pardoned through a tear,
Its hopes crowned by a smile.

Fry.

More constant than the evening star,

Which mildly beams above

That diadem-O! dearer far

A sister's gentle love.

Anon.

SKILL. SKULL. SKY.

SKILL.

THE workman in his stuff his skill doth show,
And yet the stuff gives not the man his skill;
Kings their affairs do by their servants know,

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And order them by their own royal will.-Davies.

Your whale he can swallow a hogshead for a pill,
But the maker of the mouse-trap, 't is he that hath
the skill.
Ben Jonson.

SKULL.

REMOVE yon skull from out the scatter'd heaps;
Is that a temple where a God may dwell?
Why ev'n the worm at last disdains her shatter'd cell!
Look on its broken arch, its ruin'd wall,
Its chambers desolate, and portals foul:
Yes, this was once ambition's airy hall,
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul:
Behold through each lacklustre, eyeless hole,
The gay recess of wisdom and of wit,

And passion's host, that never brook'd control:
Can all, saint, sage, or sophist ever writ
People this lonely tower, this tenement refit?

SKY.

A BREATH thou art,

Byron.

Subject to all the skyey influences

That do this habitation where thou keep'st,

Hourly affect.

Shakspere.

We envy not the warmer clime that lies
In ten degrees of more indulgent skies;
Nor at the coarseness of our heav'n repine,
Though o'er our heads the frozen Pleiades shine.

The skies, the air, the morning's breezy call,
Alike are free, and full of health to all.

Addison.

Sir E. Brydges.

THEY talk as they are wont, not as I merit;
Traduce by custom, as most dogs do bark;
Do nothing out of judgment, but disease;
Speak ill, because they never could speak well:
And who'd be angry with these race of creatures?
What wise physician have we ever seen

Moved with a frantic man? The same effects
That he doth bear to his sick patient,
Should a right mind carry to such as these:
And I do count it a most sure revenge
That I can thus with such a sweet neglect
Pluck from them all the pleasure of their malice,
For that's the mark of their ingenious drifts.

Ben Jonson.

No might nor greatness in mortality
Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny
The whitest virtue strikes: What king so strong,
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?

All slander

Shakspere.

Must still be strangled in its birth; or time
Will soon conspire to make it strong enough
To overcome the truth.

Sir W. Davenant.

'Twas Slander filled her mouth with lying words,
Slander, the foulest whelp of Sin. The man
In whom this spirit entered was undone.
His tongue was set on fire of hell, his heart

Was black as death, his legs were faint with haste
To propagate the lie his soul had framed;
His pillow was the peace of families

Destroyed, the sigh of innocence reproached,
Broken friendships, and the strife of brotherhoods.
Yet did he spare his sleep, and hear the clock
Number the midnight watches on his bed
Devising mischief more; and early rose,

And made most hellish meals of good men's names.

Pollok.