Sloth lay till mid-day, turning on his couch,
Like ponderous door upon its weary hinge.
Pollock's Course of Time.

Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floateth in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Here have I sat since morn, reading sometimes,
And sometimes listening to the faster fall
Of the large drops, or rising with the stir
Of an unbidden thought, have walk'd awhile,
With the slow step of indolence, my room,
And then sat down composedly again
To my quaint book of olden poetry.
It is a kind of idleness, I know;
And I am said to be an idle man-
And it is very true.

Willis's Poems.

There is no type of indolence like this:-
A ship in harbour, not a signal flying,
The waves unstirr'd, about her huge sides lying,
No breeze her drooping pennant-flag to kiss,
Or move the smallest rope that hangs aloft.
Park Benjamin.

Long has it been my fate to hear
The slave of mammon, with a sneer,

My indolence reprove;

Ah, little knows he of the care,
The toil, the hardship that I bear,
While lolling in my elbow-chair,

And seeming scarce to move.

Washington Allston. Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd Beneath the vast out-stretching branches high Of some old wood, in careless sort to lie, Nor of the busier scenes we left behind Aught envying.

IGNORANCE.

Charles Lamb.

With creeping, crooked pace forth came
An old, old man, with beard as white as snow,
That on a staff his feeble steps did frame,
And guide his weary gait both to and fro;
For his eyesight him failed long ago:

And on his arm a bunch of keys of ev'ry inner door,

But he could not them use, but kept them still in

store.

Rut very uncouth sight was to behold
How he did fashion his untoward pace:
For as he forward mov d his footing old,

So backward still was turn'd his wrinkled face:
Unlike to men, who ever as they trace,

| Both feet and face one way are wont to lead.
This was the ancient keeper of that place,
And foster-father of the giant dead;
His name Ignara, did his nature right aread.
Spenser's Fairy Queen
"Tis naught but shows that ignorance esteems:
The thing possess'd, is not the thing it seems.
Daniel's Civil War.

Ignorance, that sometimes makes the hypocrite,
Wants never mischief; though it oft want fear:
For whilst we think faith made to answer wit,
Observe the justice that doth follow it.
Lord Brooke's Alaham.

Oh, to confess we know not what we should,
Is half excuse; we know not what we would.
Dr. Donne.

Heaven pities ignorance;
She's still the first that has her pardon sign'd;
All sins else see their faults, she's only blind.
Middleton's No Help like a Woman's.

Let ignorance with envy chat,

In spite of both, thou fame shalt win;
Whose map of learning seems like that
Which Joseph gave to Benjamin.

Herrick-to Ben Jonson

The truest characters of ignorance

Are vanity, and pride, and arrogance;

As blind men use to bear their noses higher Than those that have their eyes and sight entire

Ignorance, when it hath purchas'd honour, It cannot wield it.

Butler

Webster's Dutchess of Malfy.

But 't is some justice to ascribe to chance
The wrongs you must expect from ignorance:
None can the moulds of their creation choose,
We therefore should men's ignorance excuse,
When born too low, to reach at things sublime;
'Tis rather their misfortune than their crime.
Sir W. Davenant on the Earl of Orrery.

I, alas, was ignorant of thee,

As men have ever been of things most excellent; Making such judgment of thy beauty, as Astronomers on stars;

Who, when their better use they could not know, Believ'd that they were only made for show.

Sir W. Davenant's Fair Favourite.

He had a fever when we were in Spain,
And when the fit was on him, I did mark
How he did shake: 't is true, this god did shake:
His coward lips did from their colour fly;
And that same cye, whose bend doth awe the world,
Did lose its lustre.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact.

253

Shaks. Midsummer Night's Dream.

Oh, who can hold a fire in his hand,
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus ?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow,
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.
Oh no, the apprehension of the good,

Shaks. Richard II.

May be he is not well, Infirmity doth still neglect all office,

Whereto our health is bound; we're not ourselves, When nature, being oppress'd, commands the

mind

To suffer with the body.

Shaks. King Lear.

Thou art like night, O sickness! deeply stilling
Within my heart the world's disturbing sound,
And the dim quiet of my chamber filling
With low, sweet voices by life's tumult drown'd;
Thou art like awful night-thou gatherest
round

The things that are unseen, though close they lie,-
And with a truth, clear, startling and profound,
Givest their dread presence to our mental cye.
Mrs. Hemans's Poems.

I lay ill; And the dark hot flood, throbbing through and through me;

They bled me, and I swoon'd; and as I died,
Or seem'd to die, a soft sweet sadness fell
With a voluptuous weakness on my soul,
That made me feel all happy.

I feel

And less to put in art.

Jonson's Every Man in his Humour
Subtle opinion,

Working in man's decayed faculties,
Cuts out and shapes illusive fantasies;
And our weak apprehensions, like wax,
Receive the form, and presently convey
Unto our dull imagination:

And hereupon we ground a thousand lies,
As-that we see devils rattling in their chains;
Ghosts of dead men, variety of spirits;
When our own guilty conscience is the hell,
And our black thoughts, the caverns where they
Day's Law Tricks.
Imagination works; how she can frame
Things which are not; methinks she stands
before me,

dwell.

And by the quick idea of my mind,

Were my skill pregnant, I could draw her picture

Webster

Of this dull sickness at my heart afraid!
And in my eyes the death-sparks flash and fade;
And something seems to steal

Over my bosom like a frozen hand.

IMAGINATION.

Willis's Poems.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if he would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear.

Shaks. Midsummer Night's Dream.

255

Immortality o'ersweeps

Like the eternal thunders of the deep
Into my ears this truth-Thou liv'st for ever.

Anon.

Cold in the dust this perish'd heart may lie,
But that which warm'd it once shall never die.

Campbell.

The splendours of the firmament of time
May be eclips'd, but are extinguish'd not:
Like stars to their appointed heights they climb,
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
And love and life contend in it for what
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there,
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy
air.
Shelley.
Attempt how monstrous and how surely vain,
With things of earthly sort, with aught but God,
With aught but moral excellence, truth and love,
To satisfy and fill the immortal soul!

Pollock's Course of Time.

Our proper good we rarely seek or make;
Mindless of our immortal powers, and their
Immortal end, as is the pearl its worth,
The rose its scent, the wave its purity.

Bailey's Festus.
And with our frames do perish all our loves?
Do those who took their root and put forth buds,

And their soft leaves unfolded in the warmth
Of mutual hearts, grow up and live in beauty,
Then fade and fall like fair unconscious flowers?
Dana's Poems.

What! canst thou not forbear me half an hour?
Then get thee gone, and dig my grave thyself,
And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear,
That thou art crown'd, not that I am dead.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part II.

Prince. I never thought to hear you speak again King.-Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought:

I stay too long by thee, I weary thee.
Dost thou so hunger for my empty chair,
That thou wilt needs invest thee with my honours

Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth!
Thou seek'st the greatness that will overwhelm
thee.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part II.
Oh! how impatience gains upon the soul,
When the long promised hour of joy draws near!
How slow the tardy moments seem to roll!

So we'll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies; and hear poor rogues
Talk of court-news, and we'll talk with them too;
Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon us the mystery of things,

Captivity,

Shaks. Lear.

That comes with honour, is true liberty.
Massinger and Field's Fatal Dowry.
Your narrow souls,

If you have any, cannot comprehend
How insupportable the torments are,
Which a free and noble soul made captive, suffers.
Massinger's Maid of Honour.

Why should we murmur to be circumscrib'd,
As if it were a new thing to wear fetters?
When the whole world was meant but to confine us;
Wherein, who walks from one clime to another,
Hath but a greater freedom of the prison:
Our soul was the first captive, born to inherit
But her own chains; nor can it be discharg'd,
Till nature tire with its own weight, and then
We are but more undone, to be at liberty.

Shirley's Court Secret. Let them fear bondage who are slaves to fear; The sweetest freedom is an honest heart.

John Ford's Lady's Trial. Death is the pledge of rest, and with one bail, Two prisons quits; the body and the jail.

Bishop King. Nature, in spite of fortune, gave no minds, That cannot like our bodies be enthrall'd.

Sir Ralph Freeman's Imperiale.

Dost thou use me as fond children do
Their birds, show me my freedom in a string,
And when thou'st play'd with me a while, then
pull

Me back again, to languish in my cage?

Sir W. Davenant's Unfortunate Lovers.

Her sweetness is imprison'd now,
Like weeping roses in a still, and is,
Like them, ordain'd to last by dissolution.
Sir W. Davenant's Love and Honour.
Captivity

Is the inheritance of all things finite;
Nor can we boast our liberty, though we
Are not restrained by strong-holds; when as
The neighb'ring air confines us, and each man
Is thraldom's perfect emblem: for in all,
The soul is captive, and the body's thrall.

Marriage Broker.

Those waves that would not bear me from the shore;

I only mark'd the glorious sun and sky,
Too bright-too blue for my captivity;
And felt that all which freedom's bosom cheers
Must break my chain before it dried my tears.
Byron's Corsair.

Within its cage the imprison'd matin bird
Swells the full chorus with a generous song;
He bathes no pinion in the dewy light,
No consort's bliss, no father's joy he shares;
Yet still the rising radiance glads his sight,
His fellows' freedom soothes the captive's cares.
Coleridge's Sonnet to Lafayette,

What has the grey-hair'd prisoner done?
Has murder stain'd his hands with gore?
Not so; his crime's a fouler one;

GOD MADE THE OLD MAN POOR!

Whittier's Poems. Look on him!-through his dungeon grate, Feebly and cold, the morning light Comes stealing round him, dim and late, As if it loath'd the sight.

Whittier's Poems.

Down with the Law that binds him thus!
Unworthy freemen, let it find

No refuge from the withering curse
Of God and human kind!
Open the prison's living tomb,
And usher from its brooding gloom
The victims of your savage code,
To the free sun and air of God;
No longer dare as crime to brand
The chastening of the Almighty's hand.

Whittier's Poems.

IMPUDENCE.

He that has but impudence, To all things has a fair pretence; And put among his wants but shame, To all the world may lay his claim.

Butler's Hudibras

Immodest words admit of no defence, For want of decency is want of sense.

Roscommon