COULD Eve's weak hand, extended to the tree, Whose golden links effects and causes be, And which to God's own chain doth fixed remain. This world 't is true, Davies. Was made for Cæsar, but for Titus, too; And which more blest? who chained his country, say; Or he whose virtue sighed to lose a day? Pope. Still in constraint your suffering sex remains, They, with joint force oppression chaining, set Glad of his liberty, the captive dog Pope. Thomson. Oft gnaws the rope that binds him to his clog; We pine for kindred natures, For communings more high and full We strive with brief aspiring, Against our bounds in vain, Yet summoned to be free at last, Howes. We shrink and clasp our chain.—Mrs. Hemans. I gave my love a chain of gold, She carries links outside her heart- Campbell. CHAIN. CHANCE. 165 Then come the wild weather-come sleet or come snow, CHANCE. As th' unthought accident is guilty Of what we wildly do, so we profess You were used Shakspere. To say extremity was the trier of spirits, Unknowingly she strikes and kills by chance, Be juster, heav'ns! such virtue punished thus, How could judicious atomists conceive Dryden. Chance to the sun could his just impulse give? Blackmore. Exuberant health diseases him, frail worm, Vox et præterea nihil; and the name Southey. Swoln with th' expansion of their own conceit. The meanest shell-fish, and the noblest brute, Dilnot Sladden. THOU shalt not see me blush, Nor change my countenance for this arrest; The lopped tree in time may grow again, Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower: The sorriest wight may find release of pain, The driest soil suck in some moist'ning shower. Times go by turns, and chances change by course, From foul to fair, from better hap to worse. A chance may win that by mischance was lost, Who least hath some, who most hath never all. Thus doth the ever changing course of things Daniel. Hear how Timotheus' various lays surprise, Youth Pope. Knows nought of changes! Age hath traced them all, Expects, and can interpret them. Isaac Comnenus. Love bears within itself the very germ Of change; and how should this be otherwise? That violent things more quickly find a term, Is shown through nature's whole analogies. Byron. The time has been, when no harsh sounds would fall God, veiled in clouded majesty, alone Somerville. Ah me! what is there in earth's various range, Sands. "Oh! day by day," a tottering dotard cries, "Nature decays, and each attraction dies, Women no longer charm as once they charmed, And men no more with pristine strengh are armed; The fruits have lost their flavour, and the sun Shines not so brightly as of yore he shone; The flowers have shed their fragrance and their hue!”- Not in vain the distance beckons, Let the people spin for ever Down the ringing groves of change.-Tennyson. In bower and garden rich and rare, There's many a cherish'd flower, Within the flitting hour. Not so the simple forest leaf, Unprized, unnoticed, lying The same through all its little life- Be such, and only such, my friends; G. W. Doane, How much of change there lies in little space! How soon its soft spring hours take darker hues! Miss Landon. Weep not that the world changes-did it keep I ask not what changes Have come o'er thy heart, I seek not what chances I know thou hast told me Change is written on the tide, Bryant. Hoffman. J. H. Clinch. Ah! if a fairy's magic might were mine, And everything thou lovest in turn to thee. Now bear me hence away, Mrs. Osgood. I like not this close room, so small and dim; Turning my mind from pray'r, I know they tell me of my coming fate, In the cool air. George F. Wood. |