Instead of poppies, willows
Wav'd o'er his couch; he meditated, fond Of those sweet bitter thoughts which banish sleep, And make the worldling sneer, the youngling weep. Byron.
Ah! I remember well (and how can I But evermore remember well) when first Our flame began, when scarce we knew what was The flame we felt; when as we sat and sigh'd And look'd upon each other, and conceiv'd Not what we ail'd—yet something we did ail; And yet were well, and yet we were not well, And what was our disease we could not tell. Then would we kiss, then sigh, then look, and thus In that first garden of our simpleness
We spent our childhood. But when years began To reap the fruit of knowledge, ah, how then Would she with graver looks, with sweet stern brow,
Check my presumption and my forwardness; Yet still would give me flowers, still would me
They never lov'd as thou and I, Who minister'd the moral, That aught which deepens love can lie In true love's lightest quarrel. They never knew, in times of fear, The safety of Affection,
Nor sought, when angry Fate drew neat, Love's Altar for protection; - They never knew how kindness grows
A vigil and a care,
Nor watch'd beside the heart's repose In silence and in prayer.
As pale and wan as ashes was his look, His body lean and meagre as a rake, And skin all wither'd like a dried rook; Thereto as cold and dreary as a snake, That seem'd to tremble evermore and quake. Spenser's Fairy Queen.
Lust is, of all the frailties of our nature, What most we ought to fear; the headstrong beast Rushes along, impatient of the course; Nor hears the rider's call, nor feels the rein. Rowe's Royal Convert. Capricious, wanton, bold, and brutal lust, Is meanly selfish; when resisted, cruel; And, like the blast of pestilential winds, Taints the sweet blooin of nature's fairest forms Milton's Comus
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, But most by lewd and lavish arts of sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose The divine property of her first being.
Vain end of human strength, of human skill, Conquests, and triumph, and domain, and pomp, And ease and luxury! O luxury,
Bane of elated life, of affluent states, What dreary change, what ruin is not thine? How doth thy bowl intoxicate the mind! To the soft entrance of thy rosy cave
Milton's Comus. How dost thou lure the fortunate and great! Dreadful attraction! while behind thee gapes Th' unfathomable gulf where Asher lies O'erwhelm'd, forgotten; and high boasting Cham; And Elam's haughty pomp; and beauteous Greece;
I know the very difference that lies "Twixt hallow'd love and base unholy lust; I know the one is as a golden spur, Urging the spirit to all noble aims; The other but a foul and miry pit, O'erthrowing it in midst of its career.
Fanny Kemble Butler.- Francis I.
There, in her den, lay pompous luxury, Stretch'd out at length; no vice could boast such high
And genial victories as she had won: Of which proud trophies there at large were shown, Besides small states and kingdoms ruined, Those mighty monarchies, that had o'erspread The spacious earth, and stretch'd their conquering
From pole to pole, by her ensnaring charms Were quite consum'd: there lay imperial Rome, That vanquish'd all the world, by her o'ercome: Fetter'd was th' old Assyrian lion there; The Grecian leopard, and the Persian bear; With others numberless, lamenting by : Examples of the power of luxury.
And the great queen of earth, imperial Rome. Dyer's Ruins of Rome. War destroys men, but luxury mankind At once corrupts; the body and the mind. Crown's Caligula,
Fell luxury! more perilous to youth Than storms or quicksands, poverty or chains. Hannah More's Belshazzar. Sofas 't was half a sin to sit upon, So costly were they; carpets every stitch Of workmanship so rare, they made you wish You could glide o'er them like a golden fish.
I cannot spare the luxury of believing That all things beautiful are what they seem. Halleck
If a phrenzy do possess the brain, It so disturbs and blots the form of things, As fantasy proves altogether vain, May's Henry II. And to the wit no true relation brings.
It is a shame, that man, that has the seeds Of virtue in him, springing unto glory, Should make his soul degenerous with sin, And slave to luxury; to drown his spirits In lees of sloth; to yield up the weak day To wine, to lust, and banquets.
Sir John Davis. This is mere madness; And thus awhile the fit will work on him: When that the golden couplets are disclos'd, His silence will sit drooping.
Marmyon's Holland's Leaguer. My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
O luxury thou curs'd by heaven's decree, How ill-exchang'd are things like these for thee! How do thy potions, with insidious joy, Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy! Kingdoms by thee to sickly greatness grown, Boast of a florid vigour not their own:
At ev'ry draught more large and large they grow, A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe; 'Till sapp'd their strength, and ev'ry part unsound, Lown down, they sink, and spread a ruin round. Goldsmith's Deserted Village.
And make as healthful music: It is not madness That I have utter'd: bring me to the test, And I the matter will re-word; which madness Would gambol from.
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, That not your trespass, but my madness speaks: It will but skin and film the ulcerous place: Whiles rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen.
Alas! how is 't with you? That you do bend your eyes on vacancy, And with the incorporeal air do hold discourse? Shaks. Hamlet.
O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, The observ'd of all observers! quite, quite down! And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That suck'd the honey of his music vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh. Shaks. Hamlet.
This is the very coinage of your brain:
This bodiless creation ecstasy Is very cunning in.
I am not mad ;-I would to heaven I were! For then, 't is like I should forget myself; O, if I could, what grief should I forget!
I am not mad; too well, too well I feel The different plague of each calamity.
Alack, 'tis he; why, he was met even now As mad as the vext sea; singing aloud, Crown'd with rank fumiter, and furrow weeds, With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckow flowers, Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn.
O this poor brain! ten thousand shapes of fury Are whirling there, and reason is no more. Fielding's Eurydice.
His brain is wrecked- For ever in the pauses of his speech His lip doth work with inward mutterings And his fixed eye is riveted fearfully On something that no other sight can spy. Maturin's Bertram.
She looked on many a face with vacant eye, On many a token without knowing what; She saw them watch her without asking why, And reck'd not who around her pillow sate; Not speechless, though she spoke not; not a sigh Relieved her thoughts, dull silence and quick chat Were tried in vain by those who served; she gave No sign, save breath, of having left the grave. Byron.
Had been o'erstrung by pangs intense; And each frail fibre of her brain (As bow-strings, when relaxed by rain, The erring arrow launch aside) Sent forth her thoughts all wild and wide. Byron's Parisina.
This wretched brain gave way, And I became a wreck, at random driven, Without one glimpse of reason or of heaven. Moore's Lalla Rookh
Gentle as angel's ministry The guiding hand of love should be, Shaks. King Lear. Which seeks again those chords to bind Which human woe hath rent apart- To heal again the wounded mind,
How stiff is my vile sense, That I stand up, and have ingenious feeling Of my huge sorrows! better I were distract: So should my thoughts be severed from my griefs, And woes, by wrong imagination, lose The knowledge of themselves.
Shaks. King Lear. O prince, I conjure thee, as thou believ'st There is another comfort than this world, That thou neglect me not, with that opinion That I am touch'd with madness.
There is a pleasure in being mad, Which none but madmen know.
Dryden's Spanish Friar.
He raves, his words are loose
As heaps of sand, and scattering wide from sense:
So high he's mounted on his airy throne,
That now the wind has got into his head, And turns his brains to phrensy.
See, what a grace was seated on his brow: Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station, like the herald Mercury, New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination, and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a.man.
He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.
Shaks. Hamlet. If you were men, as men you are in show, You would not use a gentle lady so.
But we all are men,
In our own natures frail; and capable Of our flesh, few are angels.
His years but young, but his experience old; His head unmellow'd, but his judgment ripe And, in a word, (for far behind his worth Come all the praises that I now bestow,) He is complete in feature, and in mind, With all good grace to grace a gentleman. Shaks. Two Gentlemen of Verona, A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman, Fram'd in the prodigality of nature,
Shaks. Midsummer Night's Dream. Young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt right royal; The spacious world cannot again afford.
He bears him like a portly gentleman; And, to say truth, Verona brags of him, To be a virtuous and well-govern'd youth. Shaks. Romeo and Juliet. He was not born to shame:
Upon his brow shame is asham'd to sit; For 't is a throne where honour may be crown'd Sole monarch of the universal earth.
Did all the chivalry of England move To do brave acts: he was, indeed, the glass Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves. Shaks. Henry IV. Part II.
Shaks. Romeo and Juliet. In diet, in affections of delight,
No faith, no honesty in men; all perjur'd, All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers. Shaks. Romeo and Juliet. He was a man
Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking Himself with princes; one, that by suggestion Ty'd all the kingdom; simony was fair play; His own opinion was his law. I' th' presence He would say untruths; and be ever double, Both in his words and meaning: He was never, But where he meant to ruin, pitiful:
His promises were, as he then was, mighty; But his performance, as he is now, nothing. Shaks. Henry VIII.
In military rules, humours of blood, He was the mark and glass, copy, and book, That fashion'd others.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part II
He hath a tear for pity, and a hand Open as day, for melting charity: Yet, notwithstanding, being incens’d, he's flint; As humorous as winter, and as sudden As flaws congealed in the spring of day. Shaks. Henry IV. Part II. By my hopes,
(This present enterprise set off his head,) I do not think a braver gentleman, More active-valiant, or more valiant-young, More daring, or more bold, is now alive, To grace this latter age with nobler deeds. Shaks. Henry IV. Part I.
However we may praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and infirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won, Than women's are.
Man is a vagabond both poor and proud, He treads on beasts who give him clothes and
But the gods catch him wheresoe'er he lurks,
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent; Whip him, and set him to all painful works:
And, being angry, does forget that ever
He heard the name of death.
And yet he brags he shall be crown'd when dead. Were ever princes in a Bridewell bred? Crowne.
And may with fit ambition conceive The greatest blessings, and the brightest honours Appointed for him, if he can achieve them The right and noble way.
Massinger's Guardian. Man is supreme lord and master Of his own ruin and disaster; Controls his fate, but nothing less In ord'ring his own happiness: For all his care and providence Is too, too feeble a defence To render it secure and certain Against the injuries of fortune; And oft, in spite of all his wit, Is lost with one unlucky hit, And ruin'd with a circumstance, And mere punctilio of chance.
Massinger's Guardian. His fair large front, and eye sublime, declar'd Absolute rule, and hyacinthine locks Round from his parted forelock manly hung Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad. Milton's Paradise Lost.
Man hath his daily work of body or mind Appointed, which declares his dignity, And the regard of heav'n on all his ways; While other animals unactive range, And of their doings God takes no account.
Milton's Paradise Lost. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, Till thou return unto the ground; for thou Out of the ground wast taken, know thy birth, For dust thou art, and shalt to dust return. Milton's Paradise Lost.
Eternal deities, Who rule the world with absolute decrees, And write whatever time shall bring to pass, With pens of adamant, on plates of brass; Why is the race of human kind your care, Beyond what all his fellow-creatures are? He with the rest is liable to pain, And like the sheep, his brother beast, is slain. Cold, hunger, prisons, ills without a cure, All these he must, and guiltless of, endure; Or does your justice, power, or prescience fail, When the good suffer, or the bad prevail? What worse to wretched virtue could befall, If fate or giddy fortune govern'd all?
Nay, worse than other beasts is our estate: Them, to pursue their pleasures, you create; We, bound by harder laws, must curb our will, And your commands, not our desires, fulfil; Then, when the creature is unjustly slain, Yet after death at least he feels no pain; But man, in life surcharg'd with woe before, Not freed when dead, is doom'd to suffer more. Dryden's Palamon and Arcite.
Men are but children of a larger growth; Our appetites are apt to change as theirs, And full as craving too, and full as vain.
Dryden's All for Love.
How will you promise! how will you deceive! Otway's Venice Preserved. Trust not a man: we are by nature false, Dissembling, subtle, cruel, and inconstant ; When a man talks of love, with caution hear him, But if he swears, he 'll certainly deceive thee. Otway's Orphan.
Men are not still the same; our appetites Are various, and inconstant as the moon, That never shines with the same face again: 'Tis nature's curse never to be resolv'd, Busy to-day in the pursuit of what To-morrow's eldest judgment may despise. Southern's Disappointment
Drive me, O drive me from that traitor, man! So I might 'scape that monster, let me dwell In lions' haunts, or in some tiger's den: Place me on some steep, craggy, ruin'd rock, That bellies out, just dropping in the ocean: Bury me in the hollow of its womb: Where, starving on my cold and flinty bed, I may from far, with giddy apprehension, See infinite fathoms down the rumbling deep; Yet not e'en there, in that vast whirl of death, Can there be found so terrible a ruin As man! false man! smiling, destructive man Lo
Cease, man of woman born, to hope relief From daily trouble and continued grief; The hope of joy deliver to the wind, Suppress thy passions, and prepare thy mind Free and familiar with misfortune grow, Be us'd' to sorrow, and inur'd to woe;
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