590 SMOOTHNESS. SOARING. SOBRIETY. SMOOTHNESS. SMOOTHING the raven down Of darkness till it smiled. The music of that murmuring spring Milton. Pope. SOARING. BE wise: Soar not too high to fall, but stoop to rise. Shakspere. Flames rise and sink by fits; at last they soar Dryden. When swallows fleet soar high and sport in air, Gay. SOBRIETY. SIGNIOR Bassanio, hear me: If I do not put on a sober habit, Talk with respect, and swear but now and then, Like one well studied in a sad ostent To please his grandam-never trust me more. I will be sober: sober as a man Shakspere. That hath a lenten vow upon his conscience, Or most austere of monkish anchorites: Old Play. SOCIETY. SOFTNESS. 591 SOCIETY. I AM ill; but your being by me Cannot amend me: society is no comfort To one not sociable. Among unequals what society Can sort? what harmony or true delight? Hail, social life! into thy pleasing bounds Shakspere. Milton. To taste thy comforts, thy protected joys.-Thomson. Blown in its native bed; 't is there alone Shine out; there only reach their proper use. Cowper. SOFTNESS. You may as well go stand upon a beach, As seek to soften that (than which what's harder?)— Nature has cast me in so soft a mould, I've gazed on many a brighter face, Where beauty left so soft a trace Dryden. Mrs. A. B. Welby. 592 SOLACE. SOLDIER. SOLACE. IN midst of plenty only to embrace A heavenly solace in an earthly mind. Oh, never is the path we tread, Hugh Compton. The favouring smiles of heaven will shed Some solace for our darkest days. W. J. Brock. SOLDIER. A SOLDIER; Full of strange oaths, and bearded like a pard, Even in the cannon's mouth. Dost thou know the fate of soldiers? Shakspere. They're but ambition's tools, to cut a way 'Tis universal soldiership has stabbed The heart of merit in the meaner class. Southern. * To swear, to game, to drink, to show at home, The great proficiency he made abroad; To astonish and to grieve his gazing friends, To break some maiden's and his mother's heart, Are his sole aim, and all his glory now. Cowper. A mere soldier, a mere tool, a kind Of human sword in a fiend's hand; the other Byron. SOLEMNITY. SOLITUDE. SOLEMNITY. 593 Then 'gan he loudly through the house to call, THE moon like a silver bow, Now bent in heaven, shall behold the night Spenser. Shakspere. SOLITUDE. WISDOM's self Oft seeks for sweet retired solitude, Where with her best nurse contemplation, She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings. O sacred solitude! divine retreat! Choice of the prudent! envy of the great! Milton. By thy pure stream, or in thy waving shade, Oh, solitude! first state of human kind! As soon as two, alas! together join'd, Cowper. For solitude, however some may rave, Cowper. And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us,-none whom we can bless; AND then will canker sorrow eat her bud, And chase the native beauty from her cheek. Shakspere. Forgive me, Valentine: if hearty sorrow Shakspere. When sorrows come, they come not single spies, I wonder whence that tear came, when I smiled Dry those fair, those crystal eyes, Then clear those waterish stars again, Dr. H. King. Man is a child of sorrow, and this world In which we breathe, hath cares enough to plague us; But it hath means withal to soothe these cares; And he who meditates on others' woes, Shall in that meditation lose his own.-Cumberland. And o'er that fair broad brow were wrought The intersected lines of thought; Those furrows, which the burning share Of sorrow ploughs untimely there: Which the soul's war doth leave behind. Byron. |