O, thou wilt be a wilderness again,
Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!

2 KING HENRY IV. iv. 5.

HEN London shall be an habitation of

WH

bitterns, when St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey shall stand, shapeless and nameless ruins, in the midst of an unpeopled marsh; when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream

SHELLEY.

PURGED by the sword, and purified by fire,
Then had we seen proud London's hated walls;

Owls would have hooted in St. Peter's choir,
And foxes stunk and littered in St. Paul's.

GRAY.

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow.

SONN. II.

AN

N old, a grave discreet man, is fittest to discourse of love matters; because he hath likely more experience, observed more, hath a more staid judgment, can better discern, resolve, discuss, advise, give better cautions and more solid precepts, better inform his auditors in such a subject, and by reason of his riper years, sooner divert.

BURTON.

CURLY gold locks cover foolish brains,
Billing and cooing is all your cheer;
Sighing and singing of midnight strains
Under Bonnybell's window panes—
Wait till you come to forty year.

Forty times over let Michaelmas pass,
Grizzling hair the brain doth clear-
Then you know a boy is an ass,
Then you know the worth of a lass,
Once you have come to forty year.

THACKERAY.

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.

MACBETH iv. 3.

THE angel choirs of Angelico, with the flames

on their white, foreheads waving brighter as

they move, and the sparkles streaming from their purple wings like the glitter of many suns upon a sounding sea, listening in the pauses of alternate song, for the prolonging of the trumpet-blast, and the answering of psaltery and cymbal, throughout the endless deep, and from all the star shores of heaven.

RUSKIN.

АH! not the nectarous poppy lovers use,
Nor daily labour's dull, Lethæan spring,
Oblivion in lost Angels can infuse

Of the soiled glory, and the trailing wing.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.

SONN. L.

HESE walls surround green and level spaces

THESE

of lawn, on which some elms have grown, and which are interspersed towards their skirts by masses of the fallen ruin, overtwined with the broad leaves of the creeping weeds. The blue sky canopies it, and is as the everlasting roof of these enormous halls.

SHELLEY.

WHEN Time is old, and hath forgot itself,
When water-drops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallowed cities up,

And mighty states characterless are grated

To dusty nothing.

TROIL. AND CRESS. iii. 2.