LEWDNESS. LIBERALITY. LIBERTINE.

399

LEWDNESS.

IF the muse lavish her immortal wit

To paint a fading face,

And the firm diamond, the frail honours writ
Upon the brittle glass.

Let no foul word pollute that heavenly ray
Which makes the lines appear;

Lewdness would taint the sunbeams in their way. Lewdness should ne'er be read but when keen lightnings play,

To blast the writer's hand, and shake his soul with fear.

Watts.

LIBERALITY.

HE that's liberal

To all alike, may do a good by chance,

But never out of judgment.

Beaumont and Fletcher.

For whose well-being,

So amply and with hands so liberal
Thou hast provided all things.

Such moderation with thy bounty join,

Milton.

That thou may'st nothing give that is not thine;
That liberality is but cast away,

Which makes us borrow what we cannot pay.

Denham.

LIBERTINE.

1.-FIE on thee-I can tell what thou would'st do.
2.-What, for a counter, would I do but good?
1.-Most mischievous foul sin in chiding sin:

For thou thyself hast been a libertine,
As sensual as the brutish sting itself:
And all th' imbossed sores and headed evils,
That thou with license of free foot hast caught,
Would'st thou disgorge into the general world.

Shakspere.

THIS is true liberty, when free-born men, Having to advise the public, may speak out; Which he who can and will, deserves high praise; Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace. What can be juster in a state than this?

Nations will decline so low

Euripides.

From virtue, which is reason, that no wrong
But justice and some fatal cause annexed,
Deprives them of their outward liberty.

Oh, give me liberty!

For were even Paradise my prison,

Still I would long to leap the crystal walls.

Milton.

Dryden.

O Liberty! the prisoner's pleasing dream,
The poet's muse, his passion, and his theme;
Genius is thine, and thou art fancy's nurse;
Lost without thee! the ennobling powers of verse;
Heroic song, from thy free touch acquires
Its clearest tone, the rapture it inspires;
Place me where winter breathes his keenest air,
And I will sing, if Liberty be there;
And I will sing at Liberty's dear feet

In Afric's torrid clime, or India's fiercest heat.

Cowper.

Mild, like all strength, sits crowned Liberty,
Wearing the aspect of a youthful queen;
And far outstretched along the unmeasured sea
Rests the vast shadow of her throne serene.
From the dumb icebergs to the fiery zone,
Rests the vast shadow of that guardian throne.

Let me not see the patriot's high bequest,
Great liberty! how great in plain attire!
With the base purple of a court oppress'd,
Bowing her head, and ready to expire.

Bulwer.

Keats.

LICENTIOUSNESS.

LIE.

401

LICENTIOUSNESS.

LATER age's pride, like corn-fed steed,
Abused her plenty, and fat swoln increase,
To all licentious lust, and gan exceed

The measure of her mean and natural first need.

How would it touch thee to the quick
Should'st thou but hear I were licentious?

The Tiber, whose licentious waves

Spenser.

Shakspere.

So often overflowed the neighbouring fields,
Now runs a smooth and inoffensive course.

Roscommon.

LIE.

Go, soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best,

For truth shall be thy warrant;
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Let falsehood be a stranger to thy lips.
Shame on the policy that first began

Raleigh.

To tamper with the heart to hide its thoughts!
And doubly shame on that unrighteous tongue
That sold its honesty and told a lie!

Havard.

When fiction rises pleasing to the eye,
Men will believe, because they love the lie;
But truth herself, if clouded with a frown,
Must have some solemn proof to pass her down.

The man of pure and simple heart
Through life disdains a double part;
He never needs the screen of lies
His inward bosom to disguise.

Churchill.

Gay.

The day will come when thou must give account
Of every lie, or spoken, or conceived.

Anon.

LIFE's but a walking shadow; a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Shakspere.

When I consider life, 't is all a cheat:
Yet, fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay;
To-morrow's falser than the former day;
Lies more, and while it says we shall be bless'd
With some new joys, cuts off what we possess'd:
Strange cozenage! no one would live past years again,
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain:
And from the dregs of life think to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.
I'm tired with waiting for this chymic gold,
Which fools us young, and beggars us when old.
Dryden.

Love, Hope, and Joy, fair Pleasure's smiling train,
Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;
These, mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind:
The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife
Gives all the strength and colour of our life.-Pope.

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of eternity,

Until death tramples it to atoms.

Shelley.

What's Life? at best a wandering_breath;
When saddest, but a passing sigh;

When happiest, but a summer wreath-
A sigh of roses floating by.

Life is like yon fisher's boat-
Gay she quits the friendly shore-

On life's ocean thus we float
Till the morn of youth is o'er.

Croly.

W. H. Leatham.

LET there be light! God said, and forthwith light Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,

Sprung from the deep; and, from her native east, To journey through the airy gloom began, Sphered in a radiant cloud.

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;

Milton.

God said, let Newton be! and all was light.-Pope.

All the world's bravery, that delights our eyes,
Is but thy several liveries;

Thou the rich dye on them bestow'st,

Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou go'st.
A crimson garment in the rose thou wear'st;

A crown of studded gold thou bear'st;
The virgin-lilies, in their white,

Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light.

Light-from whose rays all beauty springs,
Darkness-whose wide expanded wings
Involves the dusky globe:

Cowley.

Praise Him, who, when the heavens he spread,
Darkness his thick pavilion made,

And light his regal robe.

Dark, dark, yea, irrecoverably dark,

Merrick.

Is the soul's eye, yet how it strives and battles
Through the impenetrable gloom to fix
That master light, the secret truth of things,
Which is the body of the infinite God!

A. H. Hallam.

From the quickened womb of the primal gloom
The sun rolled black and bare,

Till I wove him a vest for his Ethiope breast,
Of the threads of my golden hair;

And when the broad tent of the firmament
Arose on its airy spars,

I pencilled the hue of its matchless blue,

And spangled it o'er with stars.

W. P. Palmer.