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414

LOVE. LOVELINESS.

Oh, sunny Love!

Crown'd with fresh flow'ring May,
Breath like the Indian clove,
Eyes like the dawn of day;
Oh, sunny Love!

Oh, fatal Love!

Thy wreath is nightshade all,
With gloomy cypress wove,
Thy kiss is bitter gall;

Oh, fatal Love!

Frances A. Butler.

Who says he loves and is not wretched, lies;
Or that love is not madness, came mad from his

mother.

It is the most reasonable thing in nature.
What can we do but love? It is our cup.
Love is the cross and passion of the heart,
Its end-its errand.

P. J. Bailey.

LOVELINESS.

WHо hath not prov'd how feebly words essay
To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray?
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess
The might, the majesty of loveliness.

Byron.

Words cannot paint thee, gentlest cynosure
Of all things lovely, in that loveliest form
Souls wear the youth of woman! brows as pure
As Memphian skies that never knew a storm;
Lips with such sweetness in their honied deeps
As fills the rose in which a fairy sleeps.

Thou art beautiful, young lady:
But I need not tell you this,
For few have borne, unconsciously,
The spell of loveliness.

Bulwer.

J. G. Whittier.

LOWLINESS.

LOWLINESS.

LOWLINESS is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face:
But when he once attains the utmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.

The merlin cannot ever soar on high,

415

Shakspere.

Nor greedy greyhound still pursue the chase: The tender lark will find a time to fly,

And fearful hare to run a quiet race. He that high growth on cedars did bestow, Gave also lowly mushrooms leave to grow. In Haman's pomp poor Mordocheus wept, Yet God did turn his fate upon his foe. The lazar pin'd, while Dives' feast was kept, Yet he to heaven-to hell did Dives go. We trample grass, and prize the flowers of May; Yet grass is green, when flowers do fade away.

Honour better lowness bears
Than that unwonted greatness wears;
Height with a certain grace does bend,
But low things clownishly ascend.

Southwell.

That lowliness of heart, the highest sense
That loving nature's bounteous hand bestows.

Marvel,

Shelley, from Goethe.

The flower of sweetest smell

Is shy and lowly.

A lowly lot is mine, maiden!
A lowly lot is mine;

Wordsworth.

But I would not envy kings, maiden!

If thou would'st make it thine.

If thou would'st make it thine, maiden!
And share that lot with me,

In lowliness thoud'st find, maiden!

Is true felicity!

Anon

416

LOYALTY. LUCK. LUMBER.

LOYALTY.

WE, too, are friends to loyalty; we love

The King who loves the law, respects his bounds, And reigns content within them.

The bounds of loyalty are made of glass;

Shakspere.

Soon broke, but can in no date be repaired.

Chapman.

Loyalty is still the same,

Whether it win or lose the game;
True as the dial to the sun,
Although it be not shined upon.

Butler.

Spenser.

Shakspere.

LUCK.

GLAD of such luck, the luckless, lucky maid
A long time with the savage people staid
To gather breath in many miseries.

Farewell, good luck go with thee!

He forced his neck into a noose,
To show his play at fast and loose;
And when he chanced t'escape, mistook
For art and subtlety, his luck.

Butler.

LUMBER.

ONE son at home

Concerns thee more than many guests to come;
If to some useful art he be not bred,

He grows mere lumber, and is worse than dead.

What are riches, empire, pow'r,

But larger means to gratify the will?

Dryden.

The steps on which we tread, to rise and reach
Our wish; and that obtain'd, down with scaffolding
Of sceptres, crowns, and thrones; they have served

their end,

And are, like lumber, to be left and scorn'd.

Congreve.

LUST. LUXURY.

LUST-LUSTY.

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not-Lust, like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth-Lust full of foulest lies.

417

Shakspere. Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty: For in my youth I never did apply

Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood.-Shakspere.

But when Lust......

Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.

Milton.

Lust is, of all the frailties of our nature,
What most we ought to fear; the headstrong beast
Rushes along, impatient of the course;

Nor hears the rider's call, nor feels the rein.-Rowe.

LUXURY.

WHEN lo! persuasive Luxury draws near,
And, beckoning, softly whispers in your ear;—
What are you seeking, madman! do you know?
Why all this hurry? whither would you go?
To revelry and mirth each moment give;
For not to live with me, is not to live.

Howes, from Persius.

War destroys man, but luxury, mankind-
At once corrupts the body and the mind.

Crown.

O luxury! thou curs'd by heaven's decree,
How ill-exchang'd are things like these for thee?
How do thy potions, with insidious joy,
Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy!

Goldsmith.

418

MADNESS.

MAGNANIMITY.

MAGNIFICENCE.

MADNESS.

THIS is mere madness;

And thus awhile the fit will work on him:
When that the golden couplets are disclos'd,
His silence will sit drooping.

Shakspere.

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place:
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.

There is a pleasure in being mad,
Which none but madmen know.

Shakspere.

Dryden.

MAGNANIMITY.

WITH deadly hue an armed corse did lie,

In whose dread face he read great magnanimity.

Spenser.

They had enough revenged, having reduced

Their foe to misery beneath their feas;
The rest was magnanimity to remit,

If some convenient reason was proposed.

Milton.

To give a kingdom hath been thought
Greater and nobler done, and to lay down
Far more magnanimous than to assume.

MAGNIFICENCE.

A PRINCE is never so magnificent,

Milton.

As when he's sparing to enrich a few
With the injuries of many.

Massinger.

Not Babylon,

Nor great Alcario, such magnificence
Equalled in all their glories, to enshrine
Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat

Their kings, when Egypt and Assyria strove
In wealth and luxury.

Milton.

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