A Complete Dictionary of Poetical Quotations

Ill fares the land, to hast'ning ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
Goldsmith's Deserted Village.

Yes, let the rich deride, the proud disdain,
These simple blessings of the lowly train;
To me more dear, congenial to my heart,
One native charm, than all the gloss of art;
Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play,
The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway;
Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind,
Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined.

But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,
With all the freaks of wanton wealth array'd,
In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain,
The toiling pleasure sickens into pain;
And, e'en while passion's brightest arts decoy,
The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy?

Goldsmith's Deserted Village.

Unknown to them, when sensual pleasures cloy,
To fill the languid pause with finer joy;
Unknown those pow'rs that raise the soul to flame,
Catch ev'ry nerve, and vibrate through the frame.
Their level life is but a mould'ring fire,
Unquench'd by want, unfann'd by strong desire;
Unfit for raptures, or, if raptures cheer,
On some high festival of once year,
In wild excess the vulgar breast takes fire,
Till, buried in debauch, the bliss expire.

Goldsmith's Traveller.
Far from the madd'ning crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.
Gray's Churchyard.

November chill blows loud wi' angry sugh;
The short'ning winter-day draws near a close;
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh;
The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose:
The toil-worn cotter frae his labour goes,
This night his weekly moil is at an end,
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,
Hoping the morn at ease and rest to spend,
And weary, o'er the moor, his course does home-
ward bend.

Burns' Cotter's Saturday Night.

Right of voice in framing laws,
Right of peers to try each cause;
Peasant homestead, mean and small,
Sacred as the monarch's hall.

Whittier's Poems.

From labour health, from health contentment springs;

Contentment opes the source of every joy.
He envied not, he never thought of kings;
Nor from those appetites sustain'd annoy,
That chance may frustrate, or indulgence cloy;
Nor fate his calm and humble hope beguil'd;
He mourn'd no recreant friend, nor mistress coy!
For on his vows the blameless Phoebe smil'd,
And her alone he lov'd, and lov'd her from a child.
Beattie's Minstrel.

Let luxury, sickening in profusion's chair,
Unwisely pamper his unworthy heir;
And while he feeds him, blush and tremble too,
But, Love and Labour, blush not, fear not you.
Your children, (splinters from the mountain's side,)
With rugged hands, shall for themselves providc.
Parent of valour, cast away thy fear;
Mother of men, be proud without a tear!
While round your hearth the woe-nurs'd virtues

move,

All, all that manliness can ask of love; Remember Hogarth, and abjure despair, Remember Arkwright, and the peasant Clare. Ebenezer Elliott.

PEN.

Oh! nature's noblest gift-my grey goose quill:
Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will,
Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen,
That mighty instrument of little men!

Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
Ye safe and formal men,
Who write the deeds, and with unfeverish hand
Weigh in nice scales the motives of the great,
Ye cannot know what ye have never tried.
Bulwer's Richelieu.
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch enchanter's wand! itself a nothing!
But taking sorcery from the master hand,
To paralyze the Cæsars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless!

Bulwer's Richelieu

In days of yore, the poet's pen
From wing of bird was plunder'd,
Perhaps of goose, but now and then,

From Jove's own eagle sunder'd.
But now, metallic pens disclose
Alone the poet's numbers;
In iron inspiration glows,
Or with the poet slumbers.

John Quincy Adams

The beaten track” — a slave for ever;

No! roam as thou wert wont to do

In author-land, by rock and river. Be like the sunbeam's burning wing, Be like the wand in Cinderella, And if you touch a common thing,

Ah! change to gold the pumpkin yellow!
May grace come fluttering round your steps,
Whene'er, my bird, you light on paper,
And music murmur at your lips,

And truth restrain each truant caper.
Mrs. Osgood's Poems.

Be tun'd to tenderest music when

Of sin and shame thou 'rt sadly singing;

But diamond be thy point, my pen,

When folly's bells are round thee ringing!

Mrs. Osgood's Poems. Forc'd to drudge for the dregs of men,

PERSEVERANCE.

Perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honour bright. To have none, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail
In monumental mockery.

Shakspeare.

Revolt is recreant, when pursuit is brave;
Never to faint, doth purchase what we crave.
Machen's Dumb Knight.

Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt;
Nothing's so hard, but search will find it out.
Herrick.

He who flies,

In war or peace, who his great purpose yields,
He is the only villain of this world:

But he who labours firm and gains his point,
Be what it will, which crowns him with success
He is the son of fortune and of fame;
By those admir'd, those specious villains most,
That else had bellow'd out reproach against him.
Thomson's Agamemnor

Perseverance is a Roman virtue,
That wins each god-like act, and plucks success
E'en from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger.
Havard's Regulus.

And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, The proudest motto for the young!

And mingle among the jostling crowd,
Where the sons of strife are busy and loud.

PERFECTION.

Bryant's Poems.

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Shaks. King John.
Nature, in her productions, slow, aspires
By just degrees to reach perfection's height.
Somerville's Chase.

So slow

The growth of what is excellent, so hard 'I' attain perfection in this nether world.

I et other bards of angels sing,

Press on! for it is godlike to unloose
The spirit, and forget yourself in thought;
Bending a pinion for the deeper sky,
And, in the very fetters of your flesh,
Mating with the pure essences of heaven!
Press on! "for in the grave there is no work,
And no device."-Press on! while yet you may!
Willis's Poems.
Stick to your aim; the mongrel's hold will
slip,

But only crow-bars loose the bull-dog's lip;

Small as he looks, the jaw that never yields

Cowper's Task. Drags down the bellowing monarch of the fields,

Bright suns without a spot;
But thou art no such perfect thing:
Rejoice that thou art not!

O. W. Holmes

Wordsworth. PHILANTHROPY.-(See KINDNESS.)

Blest are those

Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger,
To sound what stop she please: give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of hearts,
As I do thee. Something too much of this.
Shaks. Hamlet.
There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

A man, whose blood

Shaks. Hamlet.

Is very snow broth; one who never feels
The wanton stings and motions of the sense:
But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge
With profits of the mind, study and fast.

Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,
Weigh thy opinion against Providence ;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such;
Say, here he gives too little, there too much:
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet say, if man's unhappy, God's unjust.
Pope's Essay on Man

In lazy apathy let Stoics boast
Their virtue fix'd; 't is fix'd as in a frost;
Contracted all, returning to the breast;
But strength of mind is exercise, not rest:
The rising tempest puts in act the soul;
Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole.
Pope's Essay on Man
Philosophy consists not

In airy schemes, or idle speculations:

Shaks. Mea. for Mea. The rule and conduct of all social life

How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.

Milton's Comus.

Others apart sat on a hill retir'd,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost.

Milton's Paradise Lost.

Besides, he was a shrewd philosopher,
And had read every text and gloss over.
Butler's Hudibras.

Is her great province. Not in lonely cells
Obscure she lurks, but holds her heavenly light
To senates and to kings, to guide their councils,
And teach them to reform and bless mankind.
Thomson's Coriolanus

Deluded man! who, fondly proud of reason,
Think'st that thy crazy nature's privilege,
Which is thy great tormentor! senseless fools,
In stupid dulness bless'd, are only happy;
They feel no threat'ning evils at a distance:
Never reflect on their past miseries:
Their solid comfort is their want of sense.
But reason is the tyrant of the mind;
Awakes our thoughts to all our cares and griefs;
Distracts our hopes, and in a thousand shapes
Presents our fears to multiply our woes.

Smith's Princess of Parma.

Reason! the hoary dotard's dull directress,
That loses all because she hazards nothing:
Reason! tim'rous pilot, that, to shun
The rocks of life, for ever flies the port.

O, then, if earth's united power
Can never chain one feathery hour;
If every print we leave to-day,
To-morrow's wave shall steal away;
Who pauses, to inquire of Heaven
Why were the fleeting treasures given,
The sunny days, the shady nights,
And all their brief but dear delights,
Which Heaven has made for man to use,
And man should think it guilt to lose?
Who, that has cull'd a weeping rose,
Will ask it why it breathes and glows,
Unmindful of the blushing ray,
In which it shines its soul away;
Unmindful of the scented sigh,
On which it dies and loves to die!

Oh! who that has ever had rapture complete, Would ask how we feel it, or why it is sweet; How rays are confus'd, or how particles fly Through the medium refin❜d of a glance or a sigh! Is there one, who but once would not rather have known it,

Than written, with Harvey, whole volumes upon it? Moore.

There is a calm upon meInexplicable stillness! which till now Did not belong to what I know of life. If that I did not know philosophy To be of all our vanities the motliest, The merest word that ever fool'd the ear From out the schoolman's jargon, I should deem The golden secret, the sought " Kalon" found, And seated in my soul.

Byron's Manfred.

He saw with his own eyes the moon was round, Was also certain that the earth was square, Moore. Because he had journey'd fifty miles, and found No sign that it was circular any where.

Moore.

Byron.

Some talk of an appeal unto some passion,
Some to men's feelings, others to their reason;
The last of these was never much the fashion,
For reason thinks all reasoning out of season.
Byron.

Ah, yes, Philosopher, thy creed is true!
'Tis our own eyes that give the rainbow's hue;
What we call MATTER in this outer earth,
Takes from our senses, those warm dupes, its birth.
How fair, to sinless Adam, Eden smil'd!
But sin brought tears, and Eden was a wild!
Man's soul is as an everlasting dream,
Glassing life's fictions on a phantom stream:
To-day, in glory all the world is clad -
Wherefore, O Man ?-because thy heart is glad!
To-morrow, and the self-same scene survey-
The same! Oh! no-the pomp hath pass'd away!
Wherefore the change Within, go ask reply-
Thy heart hath given its winter to the sky!
Vainly the world revolves upon its pole ;-
Light-Darkness-Seasons-these are in the soul!
Bulwer's Poems.

Yes, vain philosophy, thine hour is come!
Thy lips were lin'd with the immortal lie,
And dyed with all the look of truth. Men saw,
Believ'd, embrac'd, detested, cast thee off.
Those lights, the morn of Truth's immortal day,
As thou didst falsely swear them, have they not
Vanish'd, the mere auroras of the mind?
And thou didst vow to gather clear again
The fallen waters of humanity;

To smooth the flaw from out the eye, to piece
A pounded pearl. Thank God! I am a man;
Not a philosopher!
Bailey's Festus.

If this familiar spirit that communes With yours this hour-that has the power to search

All things but its own compass- is a spark
Struck from the burning essence of its God -
If, when these weary organs drop away,
We shall forget their uses, and commune
With angels and each other, as the stars
Mingle their light in silence and in love-
What is this fleshy fetter of a day,
That we should crown it with immortal flowers?
Willis's Poems.

Philosophy and Reason! Oh, how vain
Their lessons to the feelings! They but teach
To hide them deeper, and to show a calm
Unruffled surface to the idle gaze.

PHYSIC.

Moore.

Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it.
Shaks. Macbeth.

If thou could'st, doctor, cast

The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again.

Shaks. Macbeth.
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug
Would scour these English hence? Hearest thou
of them?
Shaks. Macbeth.

I do remember an apothecary,

Miss Elizabeth Bogart. And hereabouts he dwells,-whom late I noted
In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples; meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones.
Shaks. Romeo and Juliet

PHRENOLOGY.

For of the soul the body form doth take; For soul is form, and doth the body make.

Away with all doubt and misgiving;

Now lovers must woo by the bookThere's an end to all trick and deceiving, No men can be caught by a look. Bright eyes or a love-breeding dimple No longer their witchery fling; That lover indeed must be simple Who yields to so silly a thing.

Spenser.

Literary Gazette.
No more need we fly the bright glances
Whence Cupid shot arrows of yore;

To skulls let us limit our fancies,

And love by the bumps we explore!
Oh, now we can tell in a minute

What fate will be ours when we wed;
The heart has no passion within it
That is not engraved on the head.

Literary Gazette.

So, when small humours gather to a gout,
The doctor fancies he has driv'n them out.
Pope's Essay on Man

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A Complete Dictionary of Poetical Quotations: Comprising the Most Excellent ...