SLOTH-SLOW.
SEE the issue of your sloth:
Of sloth comes pleasure, of pleasure comes riot,
Of riot comes disease, of disease comes spending,
Of spending comes want, of want comes theft,
And of theft comes hanging.-Chapman and Jonson.
They say slow things have best perfection;
The gentle shower wets to fertility,
The churlish storm may mischief with his bounty;
The baser beasts take strength even from the womb,
But the lord lion's whelp is feeble long. Ford.
What time the sun at this sweet season,
The east with transient beauty stains,
Say, mortal, dost thou know the reason,
Why the bird of morn complains.
"Day's bright mirror," thus he sings,
"To me a mournful truth discloses,
A night of life has spread its wings
And fled, while man in sloth reposes."
Greenwood, from the Persian.
1. Every time
Serves for the matter that is born to it.
2. But small to greater matters must give way.
1.-Not if the small come first.
Shakspere.
One world sufficed not Alexander's mind;
Coop'd up he seem'd, in earth and seas confin'd;
And struggling, stretch'd his restless limbs about
The narrow globe, to find a passage out.
Yet, enter'd in the brick-built town, he tried
The tomb, and found the straight dimensions wide.
Death only this mysterious truth unfolds,
The mighty soul how small a body holds.
SMILE.
A MAN may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
Smiles from reason flow, to brutes denied,And are of love the food.
Her eye did seem to labour with a tear,
That suddenly took birth, but overweighed
With its own swelling, dropped upon her bosom,
Which by reflection of the light appeared
As nature meant her grief for ornament.
After her looks grew cheerful, and I saw
A smile shoot graceful upward from her eyes,
As if they gained a victory over care;
And with it many beams twisted themselves,
Upon whose golden thread the angels walk
To and from heaven.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Pope.
On parent knees, a naked, new-born child,
Weeping thou sat'st, while all around thee smiled;
So live, that sinking in thy last long sleep,
Then thou may'st smile, while all around thee weep.
Sir W. Jones.
Full many a stoic eye and aspect stern
Masks hearts where grief has little left to learn;
And many a withering thought lies hid, not lost,
In smiles that least befit, who wears them most.
Byron.
As a beam o'er the face of the water may glow, While the tide runs in darkness and coldness below, So the cheek may be ting'd with a warm sunny smile, Tho' the cold heart to ruin runs darkly the while.
T. Moore.
How beautiful the smile
On beauty's brow, in beauty's eye,
When not one token lingers nigh,
On lip, or eye, or cheek unbidden,
To tell of anguish vainly hidden!-J. G. Whittier.
SMOOTHNESS. SOARING. SOBRIETY.
SMOOTHNESS.
SMOOTHING the raven down
Of darkness till it smiled.
The music of that murmuring spring
Is not so mournful as the strains you sing;
Nor rivers winding through the vales below
So sweetly warble, or so smoothly flow.
BE wise:
Soar not too high to fall, but stoop to rise.
Flames rise and sink by fits; at last they soar
In one bright flame, and then return no more.
Dryden.
When swallows fleet soar high and sport in air,
He told us that the welkin would be fair.
Gay.
I will be sober: sober as a man
That hath a lenten vow upon his conscience,
Aye sober as a shriven penitent,
Or most austere of monkish anchorites:
I will be sober, not because I must,
But cke because I love sobriety.
SIGNIOR Bassanio, hear me:
If I do not put on a sɔber habit,
Talk with respect, and swear but now and then,
Wear prayer-books in my pocket, look demurely;
Nay more, while grace is saying, hold mine eyes
Thus with my hat, and sigh, and say Amen;
Use all the observance of civility,
Like one well studied in a sad ostent
To please his grandam-never trust me more.
Shakspere.
SOCIETY.
I AM ill; but your being by me Cannot amend me: society is no comfort To one not sociable.
Among unequals what society
Can sort? what harmony or true delight?
Man in society is like a flower
Blown in its native bed; 't is there alone
His faculties, expanded in full bloom,
Shine out; there only reach their proper use.
Hail, social life! into thy pleasing bounds
Again I come, to pay the common stock
My share of service, and, in glad return,
To taste thy comforts, thy protected joys.-Thomson.
SOFTNESS.
You may as well go stand upon a beach,
And bid the main flood bate his usual height;
You may as well use question with the wolf,
Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb;
You may as well go bid the mountain pines
To wag their high tops, and to make no noise,
When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven;
You may as well do anything most hard,
As seek to soften that (than which what's harder?)—
His Jewish heart.
Shakspere.
Nature has cast me in so soft a mould,
That, but to hear a story, feign'd for pleasure,
Of some sad lover's death, moistens my eyes
And robs me of my manhood.
I've gazed on many a brighter face,
But ne'er on one, for years,
Where beauty left so soft a trace
As it had left on hers. Mrs. A. B. Welby.
SOLACE.
IN midst of plenty only to embrace
Calm patience, is not worthy of your praise, But he that can look sorrow in the face,
And not be daunted, he deserves the bays.
This is prosperity, where'er we find
A heavenly solace in an earthly mind.
Oh, never is the path we tread,
So drear, but if we upward gaze,
The favouring smiles of heaven will shed
Some solace for our darkest days. W. J. Brock.
A SOLDIER;
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like a pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation,
Even in the cannon's mouth.
Shakspere.
Dost thou know the fate of soldiers?
They're but ambition's tools, to cut a way
To her unlawful ends; and when they're worn,
Hack'd, hewn with constant service, thrown aside
To rust in peace, and rot in hospitals.
Southern.
'Tis universal soldiership has stabbed The heart of merit in the meaner class.
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To swear, to game, to drink, to show at home,
By lewdness, idleness, and sabbath-breach,
The great proficiency he made abroad;
To astonish and to grieve his gazing friends,
To break some maiden's and his mother's heart,
To be a pest where he was useful once,
Are his sole aim, and all his glory now.
Cowper.
A mere soldier, a mere tool, a kind
Of human sword in a fiend's hand; the other
Is master-mover of this warlike puppet.
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