If this be true, indeed,
Some Christians have a comfortable creed.
Thou wilt absolve me from the deed,
For he was hostile to thy creed!
The very name of Nazarene
Was wormwood to his Paynim spleen.
Byron's Giaour.
And soul-but who shall answer where it went?
'Tis ours to bear, not judge the dead; and they
Who doom to hell, themselves are on the way,
Unless these bullies of eternal pains
Are pardoned their bad hearts for their worse
brains.
Byron's Island.
|Superior heard, run through the sweetest length
Of notes; when listening Philomela deigns
To let them joy, and purposes in thought
Elate, to make her night excel the day.
All abandon'd to despair, she sings
Her sorrows through the night; and, on the bough
Sole sitting, still at every dying fall
Takes up again her lamentable strain
Of winding woe; till, wide around, the woods
Sigh to her song, and with her wail resound.
Thomson's Seasons.
"Tis love creates their melody, and all
This waste of music is the voice of love;
That even to birds, and beasts, the tender arts
Light from the Book whose words are graved in Of pleasing teaches. Hence the glossy kind
There at the well-head had I found the dawn,
And day, and noon, of freedom :—but too bright
It shines on that which man to man hath given,
And call'd the truth-the very truth from heaven;
And therefore seeks he, in his brother's sight
To cast the mote, and therefore strives to bind
With his strong chain to earth, what is not
Earth's-the Mind.
Mrs. Hemans.
Trust not the teacher with his lying scroll,
Who tears the charter of thy shuddering soul;
The God of love, who gave the life that warms
All breathing dust in all its varied forms,
Asks not the tribute of a world like this
To fill the measure of his perfect bliss.
Try every winning way inventive love
Can dictate, and in courtship to their mates
Pour forth their little souls.
Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one
The live-long night: nor these alone whose notes
Nice finger'd art must emulate in vain,
But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime
In still repeated circles, screaming loud;
The jay, the pie, and e'en the boding owl
That hails the rising moon, have charms for me.
Cowper's Task.
Loud sung the lark, the awaken'd maid
Beheld him twinkling in the morning light,
And wish'd for wings and liberty like his.
Southey's Thalaba.
O. W. Holmes. Amid the flashing and feathery foam
The stormy Petrel finds a home.
But like the birds, great nature's happy com
That haunt in woods, in meads and flow'ry gardens,
Rifle the sweets and taste the choicest fruits,
Yet scorn to ask the lordly owner's leave.
Rowe's Fair Penitent.
Up springs the lark,
Shrill voic'd, and loud, the messenger of morn;
Ere yet the shadows fly, he mounted sings
Amid the dawning clouds, and from their haunts
Calls up the tuneful nations.
A light broke in upon my soul-
It was the carol of a bird;
It ceased-and then it came again,
The sweetest song ear ever heard.
See the enfranchised bird, who wildly springs
With a keen sparkle in his glowing eye,
And a strong effort in his quivering wings
Up to the blue vault of the happy sky.
The star of our forest dominions,
The humming-bird darts to its food,
Thomson's Seasons. Like a gem or a blossom, on pinions,
Whose glory illumines the woods.
Deep tangled, tree irregular, and bush
Bending with dewy moisture, o'er the heads
Of the coy quiristers that lodge within,
Are prodigai of harmony. The thrush
And wood-lark, o'er the kind contending throng
Street's Poems This great solitude is quick with life; And birds that scarce have learn'd the fear of men Are here. Bryant
Lone whippoorwill;
There is much sweetness in thy fitful hymn,
Heard in the drowsy watches of the night.
Isaac McLellan, Jr.
Seeing one crow is lucky, 'tis true,
But sure misfortune attends on two,
And meeting with three is the devil.
M. G. Lewis.
With storm-daring pinion, and sun-gazing eye,
The Grey Forest Eagle is king of the sky.
Alfred B. Street.
An emblem of Freedom, stern, haughty and high
Is the Grey Forest Eagle, that king of the sky,
It scorns the bright scenes, the gay places of
I swear, 't is better to be lowly born,
And range with humble livers in content,
Than to be perk'd up in a glist'ring grief,
And wear a golden sorrow.
Shaks. Henry VIL
Madam, you haply scorn the vulgar earth
Of which I stand compacted: and because
I cannot add a splendour to my name,
Reflective from a royal pedigree,
You interdict my language; but be pleas'd
To know, the ashes of my ancestors,
If intermingled in the tomb with kings,
Could hardly be distinguish'd. The stars shoot
An equal influence on th' open cottage,
Where the poor shepherd's child is rudely nurs'd,
As on the cradle where the prince is rock'd
With care and whisper.
Habbington's Queen of Arragon
No distinction is 'tween man and man,
But as his virtues add to him a glory,
Or vices cloud him.
Have caught it as it flew, and mark'd it deep
With something great; extremes of good or ill.
Young's Busiris,
Habbington's Queen of Arragon. If any white-winged power above
Put off your giant titles, then I can
Stand in your judgment's blank and equal man,
Though hills advanced are above the plain,
They are but higher earth, nor must disdain
Alliance with the vale: we see a spade
Can level them, and make a mount a glade.
Howe'er we differ in the herald's book,
He that mankind's extraction shall look
In nature's rolls, must grant we all agree
In our best parts, immortal pedigree.
Dr. Henry King, Bishop of Chichester.
Let high birth triumph! what can be more great?
Nothing-but merit in a low estate.
To virtue's humblest son let none prefer
Vice, though descended from the Conqueror.
Shall man, like figures, pass for high, or base,
Slight or important, only by their place?
Titles are marks of honest men, and wise;
The fool, or knave, that wears a title, lies.
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I have had dreams of greatness, glorious dreams,
How I would play the lord!-How I would spurn
The littleness of that false pride which seeks
To build on pedigree its high renown:-
How I would lend my influence to suppress
The haughtiness of titled rank, and teach
That brain, not blood was proof of noble birth.
Mrs. Hale's Grosvenor; a Tragedy.
I've learned to judge of men by their own deeds,
I do not make the accident of birth
The standard of their merit.
Mrs. Hale's Grosvenor.
-He was poor and lowly born, and lived
Where merit must be heralded by birth,
Or bought with gold.
My joys and griefs survey,
The day when thou wert born, my love,—
He surely blessed that day.
And duly shall my raptured song,
And gladly shall my eyes
Still bless this day's return, so long
As thou shalt see it rise.
Another year! another leaf
Is turned within life's volume brief,
And yet not one bright page appears
Of mine within that book of years.
Yet all I've learnt from hours rife
With painful brooding here,
Is, that amid this mortal strife,
The lapse of every year
But takes away a hope from life,
And adds to death a fear.
Why should we count our life by years,
Since years are short, and pass away!
Or, why by fortune's smiles or tears,
I thought the way to death had been so broad,
Tho' I were blind, I could not miss the road:
Death's lodgings such perpetual darkness have,
And I seem nothing but a walking grave.
Sir Robert Howard's Vestal Virgin.
O happiness of blindness! now no beauty
Mrs. Hale's Grosvenor. Inflames my lust; no other's good my envy;
Or misery, my pity; no man's wealth
Draws my respect; nor poverty my scorn⚫
Yet still I see enough! man to himself
Is a large prospect, rais'd above the level
Of his low creeping thoughts; if then I have
A world within myself, that world shall be
First gave me birth, and (which is strange to tell)
The fates e'er since, as watching its return,
My empire; there I'll reign, commanding freely,
And willingly obey'd, secure from fear
Of foreign forces, or domestic treasons,
And hold a monarchy more free, more absolute,
Than in my father's seat; and looking down
With scorn, or pity, on the slipp'ry state
Of kings, will tread upon the neck of fate.
Denham's Sophy.
These eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In liberty's defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
This might lead me through the world's vain mask
Content, though blind, had I no better guide.
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeons or beggary or decrepid age!
Light, the prime work of God, to me's extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annull'd which might in part my grief have eas'd.
Milton's Samson Agonistes.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrevocably dark, total eclipse
Without all hope of day!
O first created beam, and thou great word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;
Why am I thus bereav'd the prime decree?
Milton's Samson Agonistes.
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with an universal blank
Of nature's works to me expung'd and ras'd,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
Milton's Paradise Lost.
Ye have a world of light,
Where love in the loved rejoices;
But the blind man's home is the house of night,
And its beings are empty voices.
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