The widow'd Indian, when her lord expires,
Mounts the dread pile, and braves the funeral fires!
So falls the heart at thraldom's bitter sigh!
So virtue dies, the spouse of liberty!
To hurl the rooted mountain from its base, Than force the yoke of slavery upon men Determin'd to be free.
Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. Eternal spirit of the chainless mind!
Brightest in dungeons, liberty! thou art!
For there thy habitation is the heart-
Eternal nature! when thy giant hand
Had heav'd the floods, and fix'd the trembling
When life sprung startling at thy plastic call,
Endless her forms, and man the lord of all!
Say, was that lordly form inspir'd by thee,
To wear eternal chains and bow his knee?
Was man ordain'd the slave of man to toil,
Yoked with the brutes, and fetter'd to the soil;
Weigh'd in a tyrant's balance with his gold?
No!
Campbell's Pleasures of Hope.
Yes! thy proud lords, unpitied land! shall sce
That man hath yet a soul- and dare be free!
A little while, along thy saddening plains,
The starless night of desolation reigns;
Truth shall restore the light by nature given,
And, like Prometheus, bring the fire of heaven!
Prone to the dust oppression shall be hurl'd —
Her name, her nature, wither'd from the world.
Campbell's Pleasures of Hope.
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd— To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And freedom's fame finds wings on every
Byron's Prisoner of Chilla. 'Tis vain my tongue cannot impart My almost drunkenness of heart, When first this liberated eye Surveyed earth, ocean, sun and sky, As if my spirit pierced them through, And all their inmost wonders knew! One word alone can point to thee That more than feeling - I was free! E'en for thy presence ceased to pine: The world-nay- heaven itself was mine! Byron's Bride of Abydes So let them ease their hearts with prate Of equal rights, which man ne'er knew;
I have a love for freedom too.
There is a world where souls are free, Where tyrants taint not nature's bliss, If death that world's bright opening be, who would live a slave in this!
Byron's Island.
Yet, freedom; yet thy banner, torn, but flying,
Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind;
Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying,
The loudest still the tempest leaves behind;
Thy tree hath lost its blossoms; and the rind,
Chopp'd by the axe, looks rough and little worth;
But the sap lasts, and still the seed we find
Sown deep, even in the bosom of the north;
So shall a bitter spring less bitter fruit bring forth.
Byron's Childe Harold.
Even in this low world of care,
Freedom ne'er shall want an heir;
Millions breathe but to inherit
Her unconquerable spirit—
When once more her hosts assemble,
Let the tyrants only tremble;
Smile they at this idle threat?
Crimson tears will follow yet.
Hasten the day, just Heaven!
Accomplish thy design;
And let the blessings thou hast freely given,
Freely on all men shine;
Till equal rights be equally enjoy'd,
And human power for human good employ'd;
Till law, and not the sovereign, rule sustain,
And peace and virtue undisputed reign.
O why do wretched men so much desire
To draw their days unto the utmost date,
And do not rather wish them soon expire,
Knowing the misery of their estate,
And thousand perils which them still await,
Tossing them like a boat amid the main,
That ev'ry hour they knock at death's gate?
And he that happy seems and least in pain,
Yet is as nigh his end as he that most doth plague.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
So fickle is the state of earthly things;
Such is the weakness of all mortal hope!
They fall too short of our frail reckonings,
That ere they come unto their aimed scope,
And bring us bale and bitter sorrowings,
Instead of comfort which we should embrace
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
For all man's life me seems a tragedy
Full of sad sights and sore catastrophes,
First coming to the world with weeping eye,
Where all his days, like dolorous trophies,
Are heap'd with spoils of fortune and of fear,
And he at last laid forth on baleful bier.
Spenser's Tears of the Muses
The term of life is limited,
Nor may a man prolong, or shorten it:
The soldier may not move from watchful sted,
Nor leave his stand until his captain bed.
Who life did limit by Almighty doom
(Quoth he) knows best the terms established;
And he that points the centonel his room,
Doth license him depart at sound of morning
droome.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
After long storms and tempests overblown,
The sun at length his joyous face doth clear:
So when as fortune all her spite hath shown,
Some blissful hours at last must needs appear,
Else should afflicted wights ofttimes despeire.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
But O short pleasure, bought with lasting pain!
Why will hereafter any flesh delight
In earthly bliss, and join in pleasure vain!
Spenser's Ruins of Time.
O vain world's glory, and unsteadfast state
Of all that lives on face of sinfnl earth!
Which from their first until the utmost date
Taste no one hour of happiness or mirth,
But like as at the ingrate of their birth,
They crying creep out of their mother's womb,
So wailing back go to their woeful tomb.
Spenser's Ruins of Time.
And ye, fond men! on fortune's wheel that ride,
Or in aught under heaven repose assurance,
Be it riches, beauty, or honour's pride,
Be sure that they shall have no long endurance,
But ere ye be aware will flit away.
Spenser's Daphnaida. Well may appear by proof of their mischance, The changeful turning of men's slippery state; That none whom fortune freely doth advance Himself therefore to heaven should elevate; For lofty type of honour, through the glance Of envy's dart, is down in dust prostrate; And all that vaunts in worldly vanity, Shall fall through fortune's mutability.
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve!
And like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind: we are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Shaks. Tempest
Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man; To-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him:
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
And-when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening nips his root,
And then he falls as I do.
O gentlemen, the time of life is short:
To spend that shortness basely, 't were too long,
Tho' life did ride upon a dial's point,
Still ending at the arrival of an hour.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part I.
Be absolute for death; or death, or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with
life;
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would reck: a breath thou art
Servile to all the skyie influences,
That doth this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: Merely thou art death's fool,
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun;
And yet run'st towards him still.
Thou hast not youth nor age;
But as it were an after-dinner sleep,
Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsy'd eld: and when thou'rt old and rich,
Thou 'st neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet
this,
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even.
Shaks. Mea. for Mea
Man's life's a tragedy; his mother's womb,
From which he enters, is the tiring-room;
This spacious earth the theatre; the stage
That country which he lives in: passions, rage,
Folly and vice are actors; the first cry
The prologue to the ensuing tragedy.
The former act consisteth in dumb shows;
The second he to more perfection grows;
I' th' third he is a man, and doth begin
To nurture vice, and act the deeds of sin:
I' th' fourth declines: i' th' fifth diseases clog
And troubles him; then death's the epilogue.
Sir W. Raleigh.
The wisdom of this world is idiotism;
Strength a weak reed; health sickness' enemy,
(And it at length will have the victory);
Beauty is but a painting; and long life
Is a long journey in December gone,
Tedious and full of tribulation.
Circles are prais'd, not that abound
In largeness, but th' exactly round:
So life we praise that does excel
Not in much time, but acting well.
Forc'd from a gouty hand; which, as it gains
Extent, and active length, the more it pains.
Sir W. Davenant's Just Italian
Like to the falling of a star;
Or as the flights of eagles are;
Or like the fresh spring's gaudy hue,
Or silver drops of morning dew;
Or like a wind that chafes the flood,
Or bubbles which on water stood;
Ev'n such is man, whose borrow'd light
Is straight call'd in, and paid to-night.
The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
Decker. The spring entomb'd in autumn lies;
The dew dries up; the star is shot;
The flight is past; and man forgot.
Delay is bad, doubt worse, depending worst:
Each best day of our life escapes us first.
Then since we more than many, these truths know;
Though life be short, let us not make it so.
Jonson's Epigrams.
Her days are peace, and so she ends her breath;
True life that knows not what's to die, till death.
Daniel's Rosamond.
Men should strive to live well, not to live long,
And I would spend this momentary breath,
To live by fame, for ever after death.
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Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv’st
Live well, how long or short permit to heav'n.
Milton's Paradise Lost.
Why is life given
To be thus wrested from us? rather why
Obtruded on us thus? Who, if he knew
Earl of Sterline's Julius Cæsar. What we receive, would either not accept
Life offer'd, or soon beg to lay it down,
Glad to be dismiss'd in peace?
Our life is nothing, but a winter's day;
Some only break their fast, and so away:
Others stay dinner, and depart full-fed ;
The deepest age but sups and goes to bed:
He's most in debt, that lingers out the day;
Who dies betimes, has less and less to pay.
Milton's Paradise Lost
Nature to each allots his proper sphere,
But that forsaken, we like comets err.
Toss'd thro' the void, by some rude shock we're
broke,
You'll tell me, man ne'er dies, but changeth life; And all our boasted fire is lost in smoke.
And haply for a better. He's happiest
the right way soonest. Nature sent us How sudden do our prospects vary here!
All naked hither, and all the goods we had
We only took on credit with the world:
And that the best of men are but mere borrowers;
Though some take longer day.
Richard Brome's Damoiselle.
Life, ill preserv'd, is worse than basely lost.
Sir W. Davenant's Siege of Rhodes. |
And how uncertain every good we boast!
Hope oft deceives us; and our very joys
Sink with fruition;— pall, and rust away.
How wise are we in thought! how weak in pras
tice!
Our very virtue, like our will, is—nothing.
Shirley's Parricide.
But ah! how insincere are all our joys!
Which, sent from heaven, like lightning make no Thus we act; and thus we are,
Their palling taste the journey's length destroys,
Or grief sent post o'ertakes them on the way.
Dryden's Annus Mirabilis.
Vain hopes and empty joys of human kind,
Proud of the present, to the future blind.
Dryden's Cymon and Iphigenia.
Since every man who lives is born to die,
And none can boast sincere felicity,
With equal mind what happens let us bear,
Nor joy nor grieve for things beyond our care.
Like pilgrims to the appointed place we tend;
The world's an inn, and death the journey's end.
Dryden's Palamon and Arcite.
A flower that does with opening morn arise,
And, flourishing the day, at evening dies;
A winged eastern blast, just skimming o'er
The ocean's brow, and sinking on the shore;
A fire, whose flames through crackling stubble fly,
A meteor shooting from the summer sky;
A bowl adown the bending mountain roll'd;
A bubble breaking, and a fable told;
A noontide shadow, and a midnight dream;
Are emblems which, with semblance apt, proclaim
Our earthly course.
Or toss'd by hope, or sunk by care.
With endless pain this man pursues
What, if he gain'd, he could not use:
And t' other fondly hopes to see
What never was, nor e'er shall be.
We err by use, go wrong by rules,
In gesture grave, in action fools:
We join hypocrisy to pride,
Doubling the faults we strive to hide.
Even so luxurious men unheeding pass
An idle summer-life in fortune's shine;
A season's glitter! thus they flutter on
From toy to toy, from vanity to vice;
Till blown away by death, oblivion comes
Behind, and strikes them from the book of life.
Thomson's Seasons.
Ah! whither now are fled
Those dreams of greatness? those unsolid hopes
Of happiness? those longings after fame?
Those restless cares? those busy bustling days?
Those gay-spent, festive nights? those veering
thoughts
Lost between good and ill, that shar'd my life?
All now are vanish'd! virtue sole survives
Prior's Soloman. Immortal, never-fading friend of man,
His guide to happiness on high.
In every act and turn of life he feels
Public calamities, or household ills;
The due reward to just desert refus'd,
The trust betray'd, the nuptial bed abus'd;
The judge corrupt, the long depending cause,
And doubtful issue of misconstrued laws;
The crafty turns of a dishonest state,
And violent will of the wrong-doing great;
The venom'd tongue, injurious to his fame,
Where now, ye living vanities of life?
Ye ever-tempting, ever-cheating train!
Where are ye now, and what is your amount?
Vexation, disappointment, and remorse.
Sad, sickening thought! and yet deluded man,
A scene of crude disjointed visions past,
And broken slumbers, rises still resolv'd,
Which nor can wisdom share, nor fair advice re- With new flush'd hopes, to run the giddy round.
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