It is not always possible Still to preserve that infant purity Which the voice teaches in our inmost heart. Still in alarum, for ever on the watch Against the wiles of wicked men, e'en Virtue Will sometimes bear away her outward robes Soiled in the wrestle with iniquity; This is the curse of every evil deed, That, propagating still, it brings forth evil. COLERIDGE. VIRTUE. SWEET day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The dew shall weep thy fall to-night; For thou must die. Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave Thy root is ever in its grave, And thou must die. Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, And all must die. Only a sweet and virtuous soul, Like season'd timber, never gives; But though the whole world turn to coal, Then chiefly lives. GEO. HERBERT. WHERE Death waits for us is uncertain : let us every where look for him. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; who has learnt to die, has forgot to serve. There is nothing of evil in life, for him who rightly comprehends, that death is no evil. To know how to die, delivers us from all subjection and constraint. MONTAIGNE. SIMPLICITY. THOUGH taste, though genius, bless To some divine excess, Faint the cold work till Thou inspire the whole; What each, what all supply May court, may charm, our eye; Thou, only Thou, canst raise the meeting soul ! COLLINS. IL est si beau d'aimer et d'être aimé, que cet hymne de la vie peut se moduler à l'infini sans que le cœur en éprouve de lassitude; ainsi l'on revient avec joie au motif d'un chant embelli par des notes brillantes. MAD. DE STAEL. To do whate'er Heaven gives in sacred charge, MILLER. WHEN time shall have revealed the future progress of our race, those laws which are now obscurely indicated, will then become distinctly apparent; and it may possibly be found that the dominion of mind over the material world advances with an ever-accelerating force. Even now, the imprisoned winds which the earliest poet made the Grecian warrior bear for the protection of his fragile bark; or those which, in more modern times, the Lapland wizards sold to the deluded sailors ;-these, the unreal creations of fancy or of fraud, called, at the command of Science, from their shadowy existence, obey a holier spell; and the unruly masters of the poet and the seer become the obedient slaves of civilized man. BABBAGE. THE PRIMROSE. Ask me why I send you here This firstling of the infant year; Ask me why I send to you This primrose all bepearl'd with dew? I will strait whisper in your ears The sweets of love are washt with tears: Ask me why this flow'r doth show So sickly, green, and yellow too; And bending, though it doth not break? I must tell you, these discover What doubts and fears are in a lover. CAREW. FATHERS alone a father's heart can know YOUNG. GENIUS, with virtue, still may lack the aid The nobler powers that once exalted high CRABBE. THE Indian sleeps at the stake, in the intervals between his tortures; and mental torments, in like manner, exhaust by long continuance the sensibility of the sufferer, so that an interval of lethargic repose must necessarily ensue ere the pangs which they inflict can again be renewed. WALTER SCOTT. SINCE in this dreary vale of tears No!-let the young and ardent mind A source of purer pleasure. Better to live despised and poor The wound of earthly woes. Vain world! did we but rightly feel IT is a common error, of which a wise man will beware, to measure the worth of our neighbour by his conduct towards ourselves. How many rich souls might we not rejoice in the knowledge of, were it not for our pride. RICHTER. |