For the high ones and powerful shall come
To do you reverence; and the beautiful
Will know the purer language of your soul,
And read it like a talisman of love.
Press on! for it is godlike to unloose
The spirit, and forget yourself in thought
Bending a pinion for the deeper sky,
And, in the very fetters of your flesh,
Mating with the pure essences of heaven.
Press on for in the grave there is no work,
And no device.-Press on! while yet ye may.
Willis's Poems.
My soul would wind itself in love
Around all human things.
To splendour only do we live ?
Must pomp alone our thoughts employ?
All, all that pomp and splendour give,
Is dearly bought with love and joy.
Can wealth give happiness? look around and see
What gay distress? what splendid misery!
I envy none their pageantry and show,
I envy none the gilding of their woe.
The splendours of our rank and state
Are shadows, not substantial things.
So forth issu'd the seasons of the year;
First lusty spring, all dight in leaves of flowers
That freshly budded, and new blossoms did bear,
In which a thousand birds had built their bowers,
That sweetly sung to call forth paramours;
A. H. J. Duganne. And in his hand a javelin he did bear,
And on his head (as fit for warlike stores)
A gilt engraven morion he did wear,
That as some did him love, so others did him fear.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
Hail, wayward queen
Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen;
Parent of vapours, and of female wit,
Who give th' hysteric, or poetic fit,
On various tempers act by various ways,
Make some take physic, others scribble plays :
Who cause the proud their visits to delay,
And send the godly in a pet to pray.
Pope's Rape of the Lock.
The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns;
The low'ring eye, the petulance, the frown,
And sullen sadness, that o'ershade, distort,
And mar the face of beauty, when no cause
For such immeasurable woe appears,
These Flora banishes, and gives the fair
Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her
What peremptory, eagle-sighted eye
Dares look upon the heaven of her brow,
That is not blinded by her majesty?
Shaks. Love's Labour Lost.
How Flora decks the fields
With all her tapestry! and the choristers
Of ev'ry grove chaunt carols! mirth is come
To visit mortals. Ev'ry thing is blithe,
Jocund, and jovial!
Randolph's Jealous Lovers. Come, gentle spring, ethereal mildness, come, And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend. Thomson's Seasons. See where surly winter passes off, Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts; Shaks. Romeo and Juliet. His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill, The glorious sun The shatter'd forest, and the ravag'd vale; Stays in his course, and plays the alchymist, While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch, Turning, with splendour of his precious eye, Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost, •The meagre, cloddy earth to glittering gold. The mountains lift their green heads to the sky. Thomson's Seasons.
I'll go along, no such sight to be shown,
But to rejoice in splendour of mine own.
As yet the trembling year is unconfirm'd,
And winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless.
Oh, how delightful to the soul of man,
How like a renovating spirit comes,
Fanning his cheek the breath of infant spring!
O'er the moisten'd fields
is spread; the bladed grass
The expansive atmosphere is cramp'd with cold; Shoots forth exuberant; th' awaking trees,
But, full of life and vivifying soul,
Lifts the bright clouds sublime, and spreads them
thin,
Fleecy and white, o'er all-surrounding heaven.
Thomson's Seasons.
Flush'd by the spirit of the genial year,
Now from the virgin's cheek a fresher bloom
Shoots, less and less, the live commotion round;
Her lips blush deeper sweets; she breathes of
youth;
The shining moisture swells into her eyes,
In brighter flow; her wishing bosom heaves,
With palpitations wild; kind tumults seize
Her veins, and all her yielding soul is love.
Thomson's Seasons.
From the moist meadow to the wither'd hill,
Led by the breeze, the vivid verdure runs,
And swells, and deepens; to the cherish'd eye
The hawthorn whitens; and the juicy groves
Put forth their buds, unfolding, by degrees,
Till the whole leafy forest stands display'd,
In full luxuriance to the sighing gales.
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Thaw'd by the delicate atmosphere, put forth
Expanding buds; while, with mellifluous throat,
The warm ebullience of internal joy,
The birds hymn forth a song of gratitude
To him who shelter'd when the storms were deep,
And fed them through the winter's cheerless gloom.
Anon.
Spring! of hope, and love, and youth, and
gladness,
Wind-winged emblem! brightest, best, and fairest!
Whence comest thou, when, with dark winter's
sadness,
The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?
Sister of joy, thou art the child that wearest
Thy mother's dying smile tender and sweet;
Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest
Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle
feet,
Disturbing not the leaves, which are her winding.
sheet.
Shelley.
Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd hours,
Fair Venus' train, appear;
Disclose the long-expected flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,
The untaught harmony of spring;
While, whisp'ring pleasure as they fly,
Cool zephyrs through the clear blue sky
Their gather'd fragrance fling.
The busy murmur glows!
The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honied spring,
And float amid the liquid noon :
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some show their gaily-gilded trim
Quick glaring to the sun.
Sweet is thy coming spring! and, as I pass
Thy hedge-rows, where from the half-naked sprays
Peeps the sweet bud, and 'midst the dewy grass
The tufted primrose opens to the day:
My spirits light and pure confess thy pow'r
Of balmiest influence.
I mark'd the Spring as she pass'd along,
With her eye of light and her lip of song;
While she stole in peace o'er the green earth's
breast,
While the streams sprang out from their icy rest.
The buds bent low to the breeze's sigh,
And their breath went forth in the scented sky;
They are all up-the innumerable stars That hold their place in heaven. My eyes have been
Searching the pearly depths through which they spring
Like beautiful creations.
When the fields look'd fresh in their sweet repose, Ye stars, that are the poetry of heaven.
And the young dews slept on the new-born rose.
Dews for the moisture-loving flowers
Sweets for the sucking bee;
The sick come forth for the healing South,
The young are gathering flowers;
And life is a tale of poetry,
That is told by golden hours.
If 't is not a true philosophy,
That the spirit when set free Still lingers about its olden home,
In the flower and the tree,
Byron's Childe Harold
The sky
Spreads like an ocean hung on high,
Bespangled with those isles of light
So wildly, spiritually bright.
Who ever gaz'd upon them shining,
And turn'd to earth without repining,
Nor wish'd for wings to flee away,
And mix with their eternal ray?
Byron's Siege of Corinth.
Willis's Poems. But the stars, the soft stars! - when they glitter
I gaze on their beams with a feeling divine; For, as true friends in sorrow more tenderly love us, The darker the heaven, the brighter they shine Mrs. Welby's Poems.
And infant cherubs pierc'd the blue,
Till rays of heaven came shining through.
W. B. O. Peabody.
A statesman, that can side with ev'ry faction,
Longfellow. And yet most subtly can untwist himself,
When he hath wrought the business up to danger.
Shirley's Court Secret.
Forbear, you things,
SPORTS.-(See HUNTING and SHOOTING.)
STORM-STUBBORNNESS-STUDY.
You have not, as good patriots should do, study'd | With more than mortal powers endow'd
The public good, but your particular ends;
Factious among yourselves; preferring such
To offices and honours, as ne'er read
The elements of saving policy;
But deeply skill'd in all the principles
That usher to destruction.
How high they soar'd above the crowd!
Theirs was no common party race,
Jostling by dark intrigue for place;
Like fabled gods, their mighty war
Shook realms and nations in its jar;
Beneath each banner proud to stand,
Massinger's Bondman. Looked up the noblest of the land,
In council which was once esteem'd an honour,
And a reward for virtue, hath quite lost
Lustre, and reputation, and is made
A mercenary purchase.
Thus the court-wheel goes round like fortune's ball;
One statesman rising on another's fall.
Richard Brome's Queen's Exchange.
He was not of that strain of counsellors,
That, like a tuft of rushes in a brook,
Bends every way the current turns itself,
Yielding to every puff of appetite
That comes from majesty, but with true zeal
He faithfully declared all.
Brewer's Love-sick King.
D'ye think that statesmen's kindnesses proceed
From any principles but their own need?
When they're afraid, they 're wondrous good and
But when they're safe, they have no memory.
Sir Robert Howard's Vestal Virgin.
A statesmen all but interest may forget,
And only ought in his own strength to trust:
'Tis not a statesman's virtue to be just.
Till through the British world were known The names of Pitt and Fox alone.
He that seeks safety in a statesman's pity, May as well run a ship upon sharp rocks, And hope a harbour.
Howard's Duke of Lerma.
And minds have there been nurtur'd whose control
Is felt even in their nation's destiny;
Men who sway'd senates with a statesman's soul.
From germs like these have mighty statesmen sprung,
Of prudent counsel and persuasive tongue; Unblenching minds, who rul'd the willing throng, Their well-brac'd nerves by early labour strung. Mrs. Sigourney.
STUBBORNNESS.-(See OBSTINACY.)
Earl of Orrery's Henry V. Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,
That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks,
Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority from others' books.
Shaks. Love's Labour Lost
Why, universal plodding prisons up
The nimble spirits in the arteries;
As motion, and long-during action, tires
The sinewy vigour of the traveller.
Shaks. Love's Labour Lost
If not to some peculiar end assign'd,
Study's the specious trifling of the mind;
Or is at best a secondary aim,
A chase for sport alone and not for game.
I am devote to study. Worthy books
Are not companions - they are solitudes;
We lose ourselves in them and all our cares.
Bailey's Festus.
The sage
"Much study is a weariness."
Who gave his mind to seek and search until
He knew all Wisdom-found that on the page
Knowledge and grief were vow'd companions
still!
And so the students of a later day
Sit down among the records of old time
To hold high commune with the thoughts
Of minds long gone :-so they too pass away, And leave us what? their course, to toilreflect
To feel the thorn pierce through our gather'd flowers
The ample proposition that hope makes
In all designs begun on earth below,
Fails in the promis'd largeness: checks and dis
asters
Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd;
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth.
Shaks. Troilus and Cressida
Proud success admits no probe
Of justice to correct or square the fate,
That bears down all as illegitimate;
For whatsoe'er it lists to overthrow,
It either finds it, or else makes it so.
In tracing human story, we shall find
The cruel more successful, than the kind.
Sir W. Davenant's Siege of Rhodes.
"Tis not in mortals to command success;
Still 'midst the leaves the earth-worm to detect, But we 'll do more, Sempronius, we 'll deserve it. And this is Knowledge.
Mrs. E. J. Eames. Had I miscarried, I had been a villain;
You shall be as a father to my youth
For men judge actions always by events:
But when we manage by a just foresight,
Success is prudence, and possession right.
Higgons's Generous Conqueror.
It is success that colours all in life:
Success makes fools admir'd, makes villains
honest,
My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear; All the proud virtue of this vaunting world
And I will stoop and humble my intents
To your well practis'd, wise directions.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part II.
My other self, my counsel's consistory,
My oracle, my prophet! - My dear cousin,
I, as a child, will go by thy direction.
Do you go back dismay'd? 't is a lost fear;
Man but a rush against Othello's breast,
And he retires.
It grieves me to the soul
To see how man submits to man's control;
How overpower'd and shackled minds are led
In vulgar tracks, and to submission bred.
And I said it underbreath-
Ali our life is mix'd with death,-
And who knoweth which is best?
And I smil'd to think God's greatness
Flow'd around our incompleteness,—
Round our restlessness, His rest.
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