Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

The parent love the wedded love includes,
The one permits the two their mutual moods,
The two each other know 'mid myriad multitudes.
S. Margaret Fuller.

Not for the summer-hour alone,
When skies resplendent shine,
And youth and pleasure fill the throne,
Our hearts and hands we twine;
But for those stern and wintry days

Of peril, pain, and fear,

When Heaven's wise discipline doth make

This earthly journey drear.

The Joys of meeting pay the pangs of absence;
Else who could bear it?

Rowe's Tamerlane

Absence, with all its pains,
Is by this charming moment wip'd away.
Thomson's Agamemnon,

When lovers meet in adverse hour,
"Tis like a sun-glimpse through a shower,
A watery ray an instant seen,
Then darkly closing clouds between.

Scott's Rakey
It is the hour when they

Mrs. Sigourney's Poems. Who love us are accustom'd to descend

Not for this span of life alone,

Which as a blast doth fly,

And like the transient flower of grass,

Just blossom, droop, and die;

But for a being without end,

This vow of love we take;

Grant us, oh God! one home at last,
For our Redeemer's sake.

[blocks in formation]

And doth not a meeting like this make amends For all the long years I've been wand'ring awayTo see thus around me my youth's early friends, As smiling and kind as in that happy day? Though haply o'er some of your brows as o'er mine, Mrs. Sigourney's Poems. The snow fall of time may be stealing-what then? Like Alps in the sunset, thus lighted by wine, We'll wear the gay tinge of youth's roses again

MEETING.

A hundred thousand welcomes: I could weep,

And I could laugh; I am light, and heavy: wel. There's not a fibre in my trembling frame

come:

A curse begin at very root of his heart,

That is not glad to see thee!

Shaks. Coriolanus.
As a long-parted mother with her child
Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting!
So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth,
And do thee favour with my royal hands.

Апол

That does not vibrate when thy step draws near, There's not a pulse that throbs not, when I hear Thy voice, thy breathing, nay thy very name. Frances Kemble Butler. And must they meet first in a careless crowd? This was a moment's grief.

Miss Landon

The morning blush was lighted up by hope,Shaks. Richard II. The hope of meeting her.

Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy
Be heap'd like mine, and that thy skill be more
To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath
This neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue
Unfold the imagin'd happiness that both
Receive in either by this dear encounter.
Shaks. Romeo and Juliet.
It gives me wonder, great as my content,
To see you here before me.

Shaks. Othello.

Sir, you are very welcome to our house :
It must appear in other ways than words,
Therefore I scant tnis breathing courtesy.
Shaks. Merchant of Venice.
I swea:

By the simplicity of Venus' doves!

By that which knitteth souls, and prospers lovers!
In that same place thou hast appointed me,
To-inorrow truly will I meet with thee.

Shaks. Midsummer Night's Dream.

Miss Landen.

[blocks in formation]

MELANCHOLY.

Tell me, sweet lord, what is 't that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?
Why dost thou bend thy eyes upon the earth?
And start so often when thou sitt'st alone?

Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks,
And giv'n thy treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-ey'd musing, and curs'd melancholy?
Shaks. Henry IV. Part I.
O melancholy!

Who ever yet could sound thy bottom? find
The ooze, to show what coast thy sluggish carrack
Might eas'liest harbour in?

Shaks. Cymbeline.

I have neither the scholar's melancholy,
Which is emulation; nor the musician's,
Which is fantastical; nor the courtier's,
Which is pride; nor the soldier's, which is
Ambition; nor the lawyer's, which is politic;
Nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's,
Which is all these: but it is a melancholy
Of mine own; compounded of many simples,
Extracted from many objects, and, indeed,
The sundry contemplation of my travels;
In which my often rumination wraps me
In a most hum'rous sadness.

He comes! he comes! in every breeze the power
Of philosophic melancholy comes!
His near approach, the sudden starting tear,

The glowing cheek, the mild dejected air,
The softened feature, and the beating heart,
Pierced deep with many a virtuous pang, declare.
O'er all the soul his sacred influence breathes!
Inflames imagination; thro' the breast
Infuses every tenderness; and far
Beyond dim earth exalts the swelling thought.
Thomson's Seasons.

There is a mood

(I sing not to the vacant and the young,)
There is a kindly mood of melancholy,
That wings the soul, and points her to the skies.
Dyer's Ruins of Rome.

With eyes uprais'd, as one inspir'd,
Pale melancholy sat retir'd,
And from her wild sequester'd seat,
In notes by distance made more sweet,
Pour'd through the mellow horn her pensive soul.
Collins's Passions.

Responsive to the sprightly pipe, when all

In sprightly dance the village youth were join'd,
Edwin, of melody aye held in thrall,

From the rude gambol far remote reclin'd,

Shaks. As you like it. Sooth'd with the soft notes warbling in the wind:

That melancholy,
Though ending in distraction, should work
So far upon a man as to compel him
To court a thing that hath nor sense, nor being,
Is unto me a miracle.

Massinger's Duke of Milan.
Melancholy

Is not, as you conceive, an indisposition
Of body, but the mind's disease; so ecstasy,
Fantastic dotage, madness, frenzy, rapture,
Of mere imagination, differ partly
From melancholy; which is briefly this:
A mere commotion of the mind, o'ercharg'd
With fear and sorrow; first begat i' th' brain,
The seal of reason, and from thence, derived
As suddenly into the heart, the seat
Of our affection.

John Ford's Lover's Melancholy.

But hail, thou goddess, sage and holy,
Hail, divinest melancholy!

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Go, you may call it madness, folly,-
You shall not chase my gloom away;
There's such a charm in melancholy,

I would not, if I could, be gay!

Byron.

Rogers.

Ah, there are moments for us here, when, seeing
Life's inequalities, and woe, and care,
The burgens laid upon our mortal being
Seem heavier than the human heart can bear.
Phoebe Care

[blocks in formation]

"T will soothe awhile the ache of years! The heart transfix'd- -worn out with griefWill turn the arrow for relief.

Willis's Melanie.

Blame not, if oft in melancholy mood
This theme too far such fancy hath pursued,
And if the soul that with high hope should beat,
Turns to the gloomy grave's unblest retreat.

Robert Sands.
As the drain'd fountain, fill'd with autumn leaves,
The field swept naked of its garner'd sheaves;
So wastes at noon the promise of our dawn,
The springs all choking, and the harvest gone.
O. W. Holmes.

There is no music in this life
That sounds with happy laughter solely;
There's not a string attun'd to mirth,

But has its chord of melancholy.

MEMORY.

Thomas Hood.

We will revive those times, and in our memories
Preserve, and still keep fresh, like flowers in water,
Those happier days; when at our eyes our souls
Kindled their mutual fires, their equal beams
Shot and return'd, 'till link'd and twin'd in one,
They chain'd our hearts together.

Denham
Come, flattering memory! and tell my heart
How kind she was, and with what pleasing art
She strove its fondest wishes to obtain,
Confirm her power, and faster bind my chain.
Lyttleton

O remembrance!
Why dost thou open all my wounds again?
Lee's Theodosius

A confus'd report pass'd thro' my ears;
But full of hurry, like a morning dream,
It vanish'd in the bus'ness of the day.

Lee's Edipus

Thinking will make me mad: why must I think,
When no thought brings me comfort?
Southern's Fatal Marriage.
Thought is damnation! 'Tis the plague of devils
To think on what they are!

Rowe's Ambitious Stepmother.
Perish the lover, whose imperfect flame
Forgets one feature of the nymph he loved.
Shenstone.

Ask the faithful youth
Why the cold urn of her, whom long he lov'd,
So often fills his arms; so often draws
His lonely footsteps at the silent hour
To pay the mournful tribute of his tears?
Oh! he will tell thee that the wealth of worlds
Should ne'er seduce his bosom to forego
That sacred hour when, stealing from the noise
Of care and envy, sweet remembrance soothes
With virtue's kindest looks his aching breast,
And turns his tears to rapture.

Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination.

O memory! thou fond deceiver,
Still importunate and vain,
To former joys recurring ever,
And turning all the past to pain;
Thou, like the world, th' opprest oppressing,
Thy smiles increase the wretch's woe!
Denham's Sophy. And he who wants each other blessing,
In thee must ever find a foe.

Had memory Deen lost with innocence,
We had not known the sentence, nor th' offence:
"Twas his chief punishment, to keep in store,
ne sad remembrance what he was before.

Denham.

Goldsmith

Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.
Goldsmith's Deserted Village.

[blocks in formation]

O'er buried hopes.

Moore's Loves of the Angels.

On this dear jewel of my memory
My heart will ever dwell, and fate in vain
Possessing that, essay to make me wretched.

Lord John Russell's Don Carlos.

The intrepid Swiss, that guards a foreign shore,
Condemn'd to climb his mountain cliffs no more;
If chance he hears that song, so sweetly wild,
Which on those hills his infant hours beguiled;
Melts at the long-lost scenes, that round him rise,
And sinks a martyr to repentant sighs.

Rogers.
It haunts me still, though many a year has fled,
Like some wild melody.

[blocks in formation]

Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain,
Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain;
Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise!
Each stamps its image as the other flies!

Rogers's Pleasures of Memory.

Rogers's Italy. Recall the traveller, whose alter'd form

But ever and anon of griefs subdued.
There comes a token like a scorpion's sting,
Scarce seen but with fresh bitterness imbued;
And slight withal may be the things which bring,
Back on the heart the weight which it could fling
Aside for ever: it may be a sound -

A tone of music - summer's eve—or spring,
A flower the wind-the ocean- - which shall

wound,

Has borne the buffet of the mountain storm:
And who will first his fond impatience meet?
His faithful dog's already at his feet!

Rogers's Pleasures of Memory.
Sweet memory, wafted by the gentle gale,
Oft up the stream of time I turn my sail,
To view the fairy haunts of long-lost hours,
Blest with far greener shades, far lovelier flowers.
Rogers's Pleasures of Memory

Striking the electric chain wherewith we are Hail, memory, hail! in thy exhaustless mine,

darkly bound;

From age to age unnumber'd treasures shine!
Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey,
And place and time are subject to thy sway!
Rogers's Pleasures of Memory.
That heart, methinks,

And how and why we know not, nor can trace
Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind,
But feel the shock renew'd, nor can efface
The blight and blackening which it leaves behind,
Which out of things familiar, undesign'd,
When least we deem of such, calls up to view
The spectres whom no exorcism can bind,
The cold- the chang'd-perchance the dead - And love and innocence made holyday:

anew,

The mourn'd, the lov'd, the lost-too many! yet
how few!
Byron's Childe Harold.
But in that instant, o'er his soul
Winters of memory seem'd to roll,
And gather in that drop of time
A life of pain, an age of crime.
O'er him who loves, or hates, or fears,
Such moment pours the grief of years.
Byron's Giaour. |

Were of strange mould, which kept no cherish'd print

Of earlier, happier times, when life was fresh,

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

The quality of mercy is not strain'd;
It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
"Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
Shaks. Merchant of Venice.
Earthly power doth then show likest gods,
When mercy seasons justice.

[blocks in formation]

I am an unable suitor to your virtues;
For pity is the virtue of the law,
And none but tyrants use it cruelly.

Shaks. Timon of Athens.
Say-pardon, king; let pity teach thee how:
The word is short, but not so short as sweet;
No word, like pardon, for kings' mouths so sweet.
Shaks. Richard II.
The mercy that was quick in us but late,
By your own counsel is suppress'd and kill'd:
You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy;
For your own reasons turn into your bosoms,
As dogs upon their masters worrying them.

Shaks. Henry V.

'Tis well known, that whiles I was protector,
Pity was all the fault that was in me;
For I should melt at an offender's tears,

Shaks. Merchant of Venice. And lowly words were ransom for their fault.

Though justice be thy plea, consider this-
That in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

Shaks. Henry V. Part II.

Press not a falling man too far; 't is virtue:
His faults lie open to the laws; let them,
Not you, correct him.

Shaks. Henry VIII
Shaks. Merchant of Venice. The greatest attribute of heaven is mercy;
And 't is the crown of justice, and the glory,
Where it may kill with right, to save with pity.

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace,
As mercy does

Beaumont and Fletcher's Lover's Progress. Great minds erect their never-failing trophies Shaks. Mea. for Mea. On the firm base of mercy; but to triumph O'er a suppliant, by base fortune captiv'd, Argues a bastard conquest.

Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so;
Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.
Shaks. Mea. for Mea.

[blocks in formation]

Massinger's Emperor of the East,
O think! think upward on the thrones above:
Disdain not mercy, since they mercy love;
If mercy were not mingled with their pow'r,
This wretched world could not subsist an hour.
Sir W. Davenant's Siege of Rhodes.

« AnteriorContinua »