You'll find the friendship of the world a show! Mere outward show! 't is like the harlot's tears, The statesman's promise, or false patriot's zeal, Full of fair seeming, but delusion all.
Savage's Sir Thomas Overbury. I have too deeply read mankind To be amus'd with friendship; 't is a name Invented merely to betray credulity: Tis intercourse of interest-not of souls. Havard's Regulus.
Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul! Sweet'ner of life, and solder of society! I owe thee much. Thou hast deserv'd of me Far, far beyond what I can ever pay. Oft have I prov'd the labours of thy love: And the warm efforts of the gentle heart, Anxious to please.
I take of worthy men whate'er they give: Their heart I gladly take, if not, their hand; If that too is withheld, a courteous word, Or the civility of placid looks.
Joanna Baillie's De Montford He who will not give
Some portion of his ease, his blood, his wealth, For others' good, is a poor frozen churl.
Joanna Baillie's Ethwald. Unequal fortune Made him my debtor for some courtesies, Which bind the good more firmly.
Byron's Doge of Venice. What is friendship? —do not trust her, Nor the vows which she has made; Diamonds dart their brightest lustre From a palsy-shaken head.
To soothe affliction in her darkest hour.
Friend after friend departs ;
Who hath not lost a friend? There is no union here of hearts That hath not here its end.
And what is friendship but a name, A charm, that lulls to sleep; A shade that follows wealth or fame, And leaves the wretch to weep.
What spectre can the charnel serd, So dreadful as an injur'd friend?
Scott's Rokeby. Friendship is no plant of hasty growth; Tho' planted in esteem's deep fixed soil, The gradual culture of kind intercourse Must bring it to perfection.
Joanna Baillie's De Montford. N
Gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter and fuller Yet none go willingly to take a part.
And when the most obdurate swear they do not, Their trembling hearts belie their boasting tongues.
Divines but peep on undiscover'd worlds, And draw the distant landscape as they please; But who has e'er return'd from those bright regions, To tell their manners, and relate their laws? Dryden's Don Sebastian.
Now he'll outstare the lightning. To be furious Is to be frighted out of fear; and in that mood The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still A diminution in our captain's brain Eternity, thou pleasing - dreadful thought! Restores his heart: when valour preys on reason, Thro' what variety of untry'd beings, It eats the sword it fights with.
Thro' what new scenes and changes must we pass? Shaks. Antony and Cleopatra. The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me; But shadows, clouds, and aarkness rest upon it. Addison's Cato.
FUTURITY.
O, that a man might know
The end of this day's business, ere it come! But it sufficeth that the day will end, And then the end is known.
O heaven! that one might read the book of fate, And see the revolution of the times Make mountains level, and the continent, Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state: From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy reason would he skip and play? Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood. Oh blindness to the future! kindly given,
Shaks. Henry IV. Part II. That each may fill the circle mark'd by heaven: Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, And now a bubble burst, and now a world. Pope's Essay on Man
The happiest youth-viewing his progress through, What perils past, what crosses to ensue - Would shut the book, and sit him down and die. Shaks Henry IV. Part. II.
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor❜d mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way; Yet simple nature to his hope has given, Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heaven; Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd, Some happier island in the watery waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold; To be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Pope's Essay on Man.
See dying vegetables life sustain, See life dissolving vegetate again; All forms that perish other forms supply, By turns we catch the vital breath and die; Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, They rise, they break, and to that sea return. Nothing is foreign; parts relate to whole; One all-extending, all-preserving soul Connects each being, greatest with the least; Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast; All serv'd, all serving; nothing stands alone; The chain holds on, and where it ends unknown. Pope's Essay on Man.
Eternity, thou awful gulf of time, This wide creation on thy surface floats. Of life of death-what is or what shall be, I nothing know. The world is all a dream, The consciousness of something that exists, Then what am I? Yet is not what it seems. Death must unfold the mystery!
Dowe's Sethona. What avails it that indulgent heaven From mortal eyes has wrapt the wocs to come, If we, ingenious to torment ourselves, Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own Enjoy the present; nor with needless cares Of what may spring from blind misfortune's womb, Appal the shortest hour that life bestows. Serene, and master of yourself, prepare For what may come; and leave the rest to heaven. Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health. Answer me, burning stars of night!
Where is the spirit gone? That past the reach of human sight, As a swift breeze hath flown? And the stars answer'd me-"we roll In light and power on high, But of the never-dying soul, Ask that which cannot die."
Shall I be left forgotten in the dust, When fate, relenting, lets the flower revive? Shall nature's voice, to man alone unjust, Bid him, though doom'd to perish, hope to live? Is it for this fair virtue oft must strive With disappointment, penury, and pain? No heaven's immortal springs shall yet arrive, And man's majestic beauty bloom again, Bright through th' eternal year of love's trium Beattie's Minstrel phant reign.
We shape ourselves the joy or fear
Of which the coming life is made, And fill our Future's atmosphere With sunshine or with shade.
Whittier's Poems There is no hope-the Future will but turn The old sands in the failing glass of Time! R. H. Stoddard.
Hush, pretty boy, thy hopes might have been better. "T is lost at dice, what ancient honour won; Hard when the father plays away the son! Shaks. Yorkshire Tragedy,
If yet thou love game at so dear a rate, Learn this, that hath old gamesters dearly cost; Dost lose? Rise up; Dost win? Rise in that state. Who strive to sit out losing hands are lost.
Some play for gain; to pass time, others play For nothing; both to play the fool, I say: Nor time or coin I'll lose, or idly spend; Who gets by play, proves loser in the end. Heath's Clarastella. Look round, the wrecks of play behold, Estates dismember'd, mortgaged, sold;- Their owners now to jails confin'd, Show equal poverty of mind.
A night of fretful passion may consume All that thou hast of beauty's gentle bloom; And one distemper'd hour of sordid fear Print on thy brow the wrinkles of a year. Sheridan on Female Gamestera
GENEROSITY-GENIUS-GENTLEMAN.
Oh, the dear pleasures of the velvet plain, The painted tablets, dealt and dealt again! Cowper's Progress of Error. Small black-legg'd sheep devour with hunger
The meagre herbage, fleshless, lank and lean; Such, o'er thy level turf, Newmarket! stray, And there, with other black-legs, find their prey. Crabbe.
And, being enfranchis'd, bid him come to me: 'Tis not enough to help the feeble up, But to support him after.
O born of heaven, thou child of magic song! What pangs, what cutting hardships wait on thee, When thou art doom'd to cramping poverty; The pois'nous shafts from defamation's tongue,- The jeers and tauntings of the blockhead throng, Who joy to see thy bold exertions fail; While hunger, pinching as December's gale, Brings moody dark despondency along. And should'st thou strive fame's lofty mount to scale,
The steps of its ascent are cut in sand; And half-way up,-a snake-scourge in her hand, Lurks pallid envy, ready to assail:
And last, if thou the top, expiring gain, When fame applauds, thou hearest not the strain. Robert Millhouse to Genius.
One science only will one genius fit, So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
O, my good lord, the world is but a word; Were it all yours, to give it in a breath, How quickly were it gone!
Whose breast, too narrow for her heart, was still Her reason's throne, and prison to her will. Sir W. Davenant.
Pope's Essay on Criticism. Talents angel-bright,
If wanting worth, are shining instruments, In false ambition's hand, to finish faults Illustrious, and give infancy renown.
Young's Night Thoughts.
Thou can'st not reach the light that I shall find; Genius, the Pythian of the Beautiful, A gen'rous soul is sunshine to the mind.
Sir Robert Howard. They that do
An act that does deserve requital, Pay first themselves the stock of such content. Sir Robert Howard.
God blesses still the generous thought, And still the fitting word He speeds, And truth, at His requiring taught,
He quickens into deeds.
Whittier's Poems. His was the gifted eye, which grace still touch'd As if with second nature; and his dreams, His childish dreams, were lit by hues of heaven- Those which make Genius.
Time, place, and action, may with pains be
But genius must be born, and never can be taught. They say that he has genius. I but see
Genius! thou gift of Heaven! thou light divine! Amid what dangers art thou doom'd to shine! Oft will the body's weakness check thy force, Oft damp tuy vigour, and impede thy course; And trembling nerves compel thee to restrain Thy noble efforts, to contend with pain; Or want (sad guest!) will in thy presence come, And breathe around her melancholy gloom; Jo life's low cares will thy proud thought confine, And make her sufferings-her impatience-thine. Except you make, or hold it. Crabbe.
Nor stand so much on your gentility, Which is an airy, and mere borrow'd thing, From dead men's dust and bones; and none of yours,
Whom do we dub as gentlemen? The knave, the fool, the brute
If they but own full tithe of gold and wear a To cast thee up again?
The parchment scroll of titled line, the riband at
Can still suffice to ratify and grant a high degree! Eliza Cook's Poems. But nature, with a matchless hand, sends forth her nobly born,
And laughs the paltry attributes of wealth and rank to scorn;
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel, Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous; and we fools of nature, So horridly to shake our disposition, With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? Shaks. Hamle
I am thy father's spirit;
She moulds with care a spirit rare, half human, Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night And, for the day, confin'd to fast in fires,
And cries, exulting, "Who can make a gentle. Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, Are burnt and purg'd away
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