630

TENDERNESS. TEXT. THANKS.

TENDERNESS.

WEEP no more, lest I give cause

To be suspected of more tenderness
Than doth become a man.

Shakspere.

Well we know your tenderness of heart,
Your gentle, kind, affectionate remorse
Unto your kindred.

I have found out a gift for my fair,

Shakspere.

I have found where the wood-pigeons breed:
But let me that plunder forbear,

She will say 't was a barbarous deed.
For he ne'er could be true, she averr'd,
Who could rob a poor bird of its young;
And I lov'd her the more when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue.

Shenstone.

TEXT.

IN religion

What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it, and approve it with a text.

We expect your next

Should be no comment, but a text,
To tell how modern breasts are vext.

Shakspere.

Waller.

THANKS-THANKLESSNESS.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child.

Shakspere.

The poorest service is repaid with thanks.

Weigh the danger with the doubtful bliss,
And thank yourself, if aught should fall amiss.

For this to th' infinitely good we owe
Immortal thanks.

Shakspere.

Dryden.

Milton.

THEATRE. THEORY. THIEF.

THEATRE.

Or this world's theatre, in which we stay,
My love, like the spectator, idle sits,
Beholding me that all the pageants play,
Disguising diversely my troubled wits.
Sometimes I joy, when glad occasion sits,
And mask in mirth, like to a comedy;
Soon after, when my joy to sorrow flits,
I wail and make my woes a tragedy.

This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play.

631

Spenser.

Shakspere.

THEORY.

My good grave Sir of Theory, whose wit,
Grasping at shadows, ne'er caught substance yet,
'Tis mighty easy o'er a glass of wine,
On vain refinements vainly to refine,
To laugh at poverty in plenty's reign,
To boast of apathy when out of pain,

And in each sentence, worthy of the schools,
Varnish'd with sophistry, to deal out rules
Most fit for practice.

True christianity depends on fact,
Religion is not theory but act.

Churchill.

Harte.

THIEF.

I'LL example you with thievery : The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief, And her pale face she snatches from the sun; The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves The moon into salt tears; the earth's a thief, That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen From general excrement; each thing's a thief.

Shakspere.

THOU-thou hast metamorphos'd me;

Made me neglect my studies, lose my time,
War with good counsel, set the world at nought,
Made me with musing weak, heart-sick with thought.
Shakspere.

If I could think how these my thoughts to leave;
Or thinking still, my thoughts might have good end;
If rebel Sense would Reason's law receive,

And Reason foiled would not in vain contend; Then might I think what thoughts were best to think, Then might I wisely swim, or gladly sink.

Sir P. Sidney.

Retired thoughts enjoy their own delights,
As beauty doth in self-beholding eye;
Man's mind a mirror is of heavenly sights,
A brief wherein all miracles summ'd lie;
Of fairest forms, and sweetest shapes the store,
Most graceful all, yet thought may grace them more.

Thoughts! what are they?

They are my constant friends;

Southwell.

Who when harsh fate its dull brow bends,
Uncloud me with a smiling ray,

And in the depth of midnight force a day.

Flatman.

'Tis not high power that makes a place divine,
Nor that the men from gods derive their line;
But sacred thoughts in holy bosoms stored,
Make people noble and the place adored.

Beaumont and Fletcher.

There's not a day but, to the man of thought,
Betrays some secret that throws new reproach
On life, and makes him sick of seeing more.

'Tis a base

Abandonment of reason to resign
Our right of thought.

Young.

Byron.

Thanks to the human heart by which we love,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Wordsworth.

It is fine

To stand upon some lofty mountain thought,
And feel the spirit stretch into a view.

She's noble, noble-one to keep
Embalm'd for dreams of fever's sleep,
An eye for nature-taste refin'd-
Perception swift-and balanc'd mind
And, more than all, a gift of thought,
To such a spirit-fineness wrought,
That on my ear her language fell,

Bailey.

As if each word dissolv'd a spell.—N. P. Willis.

For she hath liv'd with heart and soul alive
To all that makes life beautiful and fair;
Sweet thoughts, like honey-bees, have made their hive
Of her soft bosom cell, and cluster there.

Mrs. A. B. Welby.

Sometimes a dark thought crossed
My fancy, like the sullen bat that flies
Athwart the melancholy moon at eve.

Procter.

Blessed Thought! thou dearest boon from God to man!
Thy world within is formed to live and move;
Thy world eternity alone can span!

Where the fond soul can cherish-aye can love-
Can show an innate evidence to prove,
A part immortal mingles with our clay;
For Thought, all bodiless, will soar above;
And thus her Maker's image can display

A boon nor time, nor place, nor death shall snatch away!

W. H. Leatham.

To thine own woes be not thy thoughts confin'd,
But go abroad and think on all mankind.

Sir E. Brydges.

634

THRIFT. TIES. TILLAGE.

THRIFT.

THIS was a way to thrive, and he was blest;
And thrift is blessing, if men steal it not.

Thrift, thrift, Horatio!

The funeral baked meats

Shakspere.

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage dinner.

Shakspere.

Thus heaven, though all-sufficient, shows a thrift
In his economy, and bounds his gift.

Though some men do as do they would,
Let thrifty do as do they should.

TIES.

YES, let the eagle change his plume,
The leaf its hue, the flower its bloom,
But ties around that heart were spun,
Which would not, could not be undone.

Dryden.

Tusser.

Campbell.

O grief beyond all other griefs, when fate
First leaves the young heart lone and desolate
In the wide world, without that only tie,
For which it wished to live, or feared to die.

Moore.

TILLAGE.

BID the laborious hind,

Whose hardened hands did long in tillage toil,
Neglect the promised harvest of the soil.

Send him from the garden forth to till
The ground whence he was taken.

Dryden.

Milton.

O thrice, thrice happy he, who shuns the cares
Of city troubles and of state affairs;
And, serving Ceres, tills with his own team
His own free land, left by his friends to him!

Du Bartas.