Thanks to the human heart by which we love,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Wordsworth.
It is fine
To stand upon some lofty mountain thought,
And feel the spirit stretch into a view.
She's noble, noble-one to keep
Embalm'd for dreams of fever's sleep,
An eye for nature-taste refin'd-
Perception swift-and balanc'd mind
And, more than all, a gift of thought,
To such a spirit-fineness wrought,
That on my ear her language fell,
As if each word dissolv'd a spell.-N. P. Willis.
Sometimes a dark thought crossed
My fancy, like the sullen bat that flies
Athwart the melancholy moon at eve.
For she hath liv'd with heart and soul alive
To all that makes life beautiful and fair;
Sweet thoughts, like honey-bees, have made their hive
Of her soft bosom cell, and cluster there.
Mrs. A. B. Welby.
Procter.
Blessed Thought! thou dearest boon from God to man!
Thy world within is formed to live and move;
Thy world eternity alone can span!
Where the fond soul can cherish-aye can love-
Can show an innate evidence to prove,
A part immortal mingles with our clay;
For Thought, all bodiless, will soar above;
And thus her Maker's image can display
A boon nor time, nor place, nor death shall snatch
W. H. Leatham.
away!
To thine own woes be not thy thoughts confin'd,
But go abroad and think on all mankind.
Sir E. Brydges.
THRIFT.
THIS was a way to thrive, and he was blest;
And thrift is blessing, if men steal it not.
The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage dinner.
Shakspere.
Thus heaven, though all-sufficient, shows a thrift
In his economy, and bounds his gift.
Dryden.
Though some men do as do they would,
Let thrifty do as do they should.
TIES.
YES, let the eagle change his plume,
The leaf its hue, the flower its bloom,
But ties around that heart were spun,
Which would not, could not be undone.
Send him from the garden forth to till
The ground whence he was taken.
O grief beyond all other griefs, when fate
First leaves the young heart lone and desolate
In the wide world, without that only tie,
For which it wished to live, or feared to die.
TILLAGE.
BID the laborious hind,
Whose hardened hands did long in tillage toil,
Neglect the promised harvest of the soil.
Milton.
O thrice, thrice happy he, who shuns the cares
Of city troubles and of state affairs;
And, serving Ceres, tills with his own team
His own free land, left by his friends to him!
Du Bartas.
TIME.
FOR though we sleep, or wake, or roam, or ride, Aye fleeth the time; it will no man abide.-Chaucer.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow;
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow. Shakspere.
Even such is time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days!
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up I trust?
Sir W. Raleigh.
Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more than what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross:
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
Time's minutes, whilst they're told,
Do make us old;
And every sand of his fleet glass,
Increasing age as it doth pass,
Insensibly sows wrinkles there,
Where flowers and roses do appear.
*
*
*
Takes wing
Leaving behind him, as he flies,
An unperceived dimness in thine eyes.
*
Time is the feather'd thing,
And while I praise
The sparklings of thy locks, and call them rays,
636
Minutes are number'd by the fall of sands,
As by an hour-glass; the span of time
Doth waste us to our graves, and we look on it,
An age of pleasures, revell'd out, comes home
At last, and ends in sorrow: but the life,
Weary of riot, numbers every sand,
Wailing in sighs, until the last drop down;
So to conclude calamity in rest.
Think we, or think we not, Time hurries on
With a resistless, unremitting stream;
Yet treads more soft than e'er did midnight thief,
That slides his hand under the miser's pillow,
And carries off his prize.
Blair.
The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
But from its loss. To give it then a tongue,
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,
I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,
It is the knell of my departing hours:
Where are they? With the years beyond the flood.
Young.
Oh Time! thou beautifier of the dead,-
Adorner of the ruin-comforter
And only healer when the heart hath bled—
Time! the corrector when our judgments err,
The test of truth, love,-sole philosopher!-Byron.
Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career,
Dark, stern, and pitiless, and pauses not
Amid the mighty rocks that strew his path,
To sit and muse, like other conquerors,
Upon the fearful ruin he hath wrought.
Compar'd with thee, even centuries in their might
Seem but like atoms in the sun's broad ray;
Thou sweep'st them on in thy majestic flight,
Scattering them from thy plumes like drops of spray,
Cast from the ocean in its scornful play.
Mrs. A. B. Welby.
TITLES.
ALL transitory titles I detest;
A virtuous life I mean to boast alone;
Our birth's our sires', our virtues be our own.
Brush off
This honour'd dust that soils your company;
This thing which, nature carelessly obtruded
Upon the world, to teach that pride and folly
Make titular greatness the envy but
Of fools-the wise man's pity.
A fool indeed hath great need of a title,
It teaches men to call him count and duke,
And to forget his proper name of fool.
How poor are all hereditary honours,
Those poor possessions from another's deeds,
Unless our own just virtues form our title,
And give a sanction to our fond assumptions!
Titles, the servile courtiers' lean reward,
Sometimes the pay of virtue, but more oft
The hire which greatness gives to slaves and sycophants.
Rowe.
Titles are marks of honest men and wise;
The fool or knave who wears a title, lies.
Shirley.
Then shall they seek to avail themselves of names,
Places, and titles; and with these to join
Secular power.
Milton.
With their authors, in oblivion sunk,
Vain titles lie; the servile badges oft
Of mean submission, not the meed of worth.
Titles of honour add not to his worth,
Who is himself an honour to his titles.
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