SUPERFLUITY.

SUPPLICATION. SUPPORT. 615

SUPERFLUITY.

IF ye know

Why ask ye, and superfluous begin
Your message like to end so much in vain?

Milton.

His conscience cheered him with a life well spent,
His prudence a superfluous something lent,
Which made the poor who took, and poor who gave,

content.

Harte.

SUPPLICATION.

ERE on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation,

No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication;

SUPPORT.

ONE adequate support

Coleridge.

For the calamities of mortal life
Exists-one only; an assured belief
That the procession of our fate, however
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being
Of infinite benevolence and power;
Whose everlasting purposes embrace
All accidents, converting them to good.
Wordsworth.

Ianthe! thou art called to cross the sea!
A path forbidden me.

Remember while the sun his blessing sheds
Upon the mountain heads,

How often we have watcht him laying down
His brow, and dropt our own

Against each other's, and how faint and short
And sliding the support!

W. S. Landor.

616

SURE,

SURFACE. SURFEIT.

SURE.

WHO knows,

Let this be good, whether our angry foe
Can give it, or will ever? How he can,
Is doubtful; that he never will, is sure.

The youngest in the morning are not sure
That till the night their life can be secure.

The mountain rill

Milton.

Denham.

Seeks with no surer flow the far, bright sea,
Than my unchang'd affections flow to thee.
Park Benjamin.

SURFACE.

ERRORS, like straws, upon the surface flow;

He who would search for pearls must dive below.

The deepest ice that ever froze

Dryden.

Can only o'er the surface close;

The living stream lies quick below,
And flows, and cannot cease to flow.

Byron.

SURFEIT.

As surfeit is the father of much fast,
So every scope, by the immoderate use,
Turns to restraint.

They surfeited with honey; and began

Shakspere.

To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof little
More than a little is by much too much.

Why, disease, dost thou molest
Ladies, and of them the best?
Do not men grow sick of rites
To thy altars by their nights
Spent in surfeit?

Shakspere.

Ben Jonson.

SURPRISE. SUSPENSE. SUSPICION.

SURPRISE.

WITH wild surprise,

As if to marble struck, devoid of sense,
A stupid moment motionless she stood.

617

Thomson.

Were his eyes open? Yes, and his mouth too;—
Surprise has this effect, to make one dumb,
Yet leave the gate, which eloquence slips through,
As wide as if a long speech were to come.

Byron.

SUSPENSE.

TEN days the prophet in suspense remained,
Would no man's fate pronounce; at length constrained

By Ithacus, he solemnly designed

Me for the sacrifice.

For thee the fates, severely kind, ordain

Denham.

A cool suspense, from pleasure or from pain.-Pope.

But be not long, for in the tedious minutes,
Exquisite interval, I'm on the rack;
For sure the greatest evil man can know,
Bears no proportion to this dread suspense.

Frowde.

SUSPICION.

SUSPICION ever haunts the guilty mind;

The thief doth fear each bush an officer.-Shakspere.

Suspicion is a heavy armour, and

With its own weight impedes, more than it protects.

And shall we all condemn, and all distrust,
Because some men are false, and some unjust?
Forbid it, Heaven! for better 't were to be
Duped of the fond impossibility

Byron.

Of light and radiance which sleep's visions gave,
Than thus to live suspicion's bitter slave.

Mrs. Norton.

618

SWEARING. SWEETNESS.

SWEARING.

A MAD-CAP ruffian, and a swearing jack,
That thinks with oaths to face the matter out.

Shakspere.
Take not His name, who made thy mouth, in vain;
It gets thee nothing, and hath no excuse.
Lust and wine plead a pleasure: avarice, gain:
But the cheap swearer through his open sluice
Lets his soul run for nought, as little fearing.
Were I an epicure, I could 'bate swearing.

G. Herbert.

Maintain your rank, vulgarity despise,
To swear is neither brave, polite, nor wise;
You would not swear upon a bed of death-
Reflect-your Maker now may stop your breath.

Anon.

SWEETNESS.

THE summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live or die;
But if that flow'r with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity;
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

Shakspere.

Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.

Have you seen but a bright lily grow
Before rude hands have touch'd it?

Have you mark'd but the fall of the snow
Before the soil hath smutch'd it?

Have you felt the wool of the beaver,
Or swan's down ever?

Or have smell'd of the bud o'the briar?
Or the nard in the fire?

Or have tasted the bag of the bee?

Shakspere.

O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!

Ben Jonson.

Your words are like the notes of dying swans-
Too sweet to last.

Dryden.

SWIFTNESS. SWIMMING. SYCOPHANT.

SWIFTNESS.

I GO, I go, look how I go;

Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow.

The old Scythians

619

Shakspere.

Painted blind fortune's powerful hands with wings,
To show her gifts come swift and suddenly,
Which if her favourite be not swift to take,
He loses them for ever. Then be wise;
Stay but awhile here, and I'll send to thee.

SWIMMING.

Chapman.

I SAW him beat the surges under him,
And ride upon their backs; he trod the waves,
Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted
The surge most swollen that met him.

With a swimmer's stroke

Shakspere.

Flinging the billows back from my drenched hair,
And laughing from my lip the audacious brine,
Which kissed it like a wine-cup, rising o'er
The waves as they arose, and prouder still
The loftier they uplifted me.

SYCOPHANT.

Byron.

CAN a king give thee more than is his own?
Know, a king's dignity is public wealth;
On that subsists the nation's fame and power.
Shall falling sycophants, to plump themselves,
Eat up their master, and dethrone his glory?
What are such wretches? What but vapours foul,
From fens and bogs, by royal beams exhal'd,
That radiance intercepting, which should cheer
The land at large? Hence subjects' hearts grow cold:
And frozen loyalty forgets to flow:

But then 't is slipp'ry standing for the minion:
Stains on his ermine, to their royal master
Such miscreants are; not jewels in his crown.

Young.