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Decide no question with their tedious length,
For opposition gives opinion strength,
Divert the champions prodigal of breath,
And put the peaceably disposed to death.
O, thwart me not, Sir Soph, at every turn,
Nor carp at every flaw you may discern!
Though syllogisms hang not on my tongue,
I am not surely always in the wrong;
"T is hard if all is false that I advance,
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
Not that all freedom of dissent I blame;

No, - there I grant the privilege I claim.
A disputable point is no man's ground;
Rove where you please, 't is common all around.
Discourse may want an animated No,

To brush the surface, and to make it flow;
But still remember, if you mean to please,
To press your point with modesty and ease.
The mark at which my juster aim I take,
Is contradiction for its own dear sake.
Set your opinion at whatever pitch,
Knots and impediments make something hitch;
Adopt his own, 't is equally in vain,
Your thread of argument is snapped again.
The wrangler, rather than accord with you,
Will judge himself deceived, and prove it too.
Vociferated logic kills me quite;

A noisy man is always in the right.

I twirl my thumbs, fall back into my chair,
Fix on the wainscot a distressful stare,
And, when I hope his blunders are all out,
Reply discreetly, "To be sure -- no doubt!"

WILLIAM Cowper.

FAME.

FROM THE "ESSAY ON MAN."

WHAT's fame?- a fancied life in others' breath,
A thing beyond us, e'en before our death.
Just what you hear, you have; and what's un-
known

The same (my lord) if Tully's, or your own.
All that we feel of it begins and ends
In the small circle of our foes or friends;
To all beside, as much an empty shade
A Eugene living as a Cæsar dead;
Alike or when or where they shone or shine,
Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine.

A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod;
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
Fame but from death a villain's name can save,
As justice tears his body from the grave;
When what to oblivion better were resigned
Is hung on high, to poison half mankind.
All fame is foreign, but of true desert;
Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart:
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas ;
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels
Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels.
ALEXANDER POPE.

FAME.

HER house is all of Echo made
Where never dies the sound;
And as her brows the clouds invade,
Her feet do strike the ground.
BEN JONSON.

OATHS.

FROM "CONVERSATION."

OATHS terminate, as Paul observes, all strife,―
Some men have surely then a peaceful life.
Whatever subject occupy discourse,
The feats of Vestris, or the naval force,
Asseveration blustering in your face
Makes contradiction such a hopeless case:
In every tale they tell, or false or true,
Well known, or such as no man ever knew,
They fix attention, heedless of your pain,
With oaths like rivets forced into the brain;

And even when sober truth prevails throughout,
They swear it, till affirmance breeds a doubt.
A Persian, humble servant of the Sun,
Who, though devout, yet bigotry had none,
Hearing a lawyer, grave in his address,
With adjurations every word impress,
Supposed the man a bishop, or, at least,
God's name so much upon his lips, a priest;
Bowed at the close with all his graceful airs,
And begged an interest in his frequent prayers.

WILLIAM COWPER.

PERSEVERANCE.

IN facile natures fancies quickly grow,
But such quick fancies have but little root.
Soon the narcissus flowers and dies, but slow
The tree whose blossoms shall mature to fruit.
Grace is a moment's happy feeling, Power
A life's slow growth; and we for many an hour
Must strain and toil, and wait and weep, if we
The perfect fruit of all we are would see.

From the Italian of LEONARDO DA VINCI,
by WILLIAM W. STORY.

CONSTANCY.

ONE eve of beauty, when the sun
Was on the streams of Guadalquiver,

To gold converting, one by one,
The ripples of the mighty river,

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In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece ;

But by your fathers' worth if yours you rate, Count me those only who were good and great. Go! if your ancient but ignoble blood

Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood,

Go! and pretend your family is young,

Nor own your fathers have been fools so long. What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.

Look next on greatness; say where greatness lies?

"Where, but among the heroes and the wise?"
Heroes are much the same, the point's agreed,
From Macedonia's madman to the Swede;
The whole strange purpose of their lives, to find
Or make an enemy of all mankind!
Not one looks backward, onward still he goes,
Yet ne'er looks forward farther than his nose.
No less alike the politic and wise;

All sly, slow things, with circumspective eyes:
Men in their loose, unguarded hours they take,
Not that themselves are wise, but others weak.
But grant that those can conquer, these can
cheat;

'T is phrase absurd to call a villain great :
Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave,
Is but the more a fool, the more a knave.
Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
Or, failing, smiles in exile or in chains,
Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed
Like Socrates, that man is great indeed.

ALEXANDER POPE.

GREATNESS.

FROM THE "ESSAY ON MAN."

HONOR and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.
Fortune in men has some small difference made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned.
"What differ more (you cry) than crown and
cowl?"

I'll tell you, friend; a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunella.
Stuck o'er with titles, and hung round with
strings,

That thou mayst be by kings, or whores of kings;
Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race,

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OPPORTUNITY.

FROM "JULIUS CÆSAR."

THERE is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows, and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.

SHAKESPEARE.

REASON AND INSTINCT.

FROM THE "ESSAY ON MAN."

WHETHER with reason or with instinct blest, Know, all enjoy that power which suits them best; To bliss alike by that direction tend,

And find the means proportioned to their end. Sav, where full instinct is the unerring guide, What pope or council can they need beside ? Reason, however able, cool at best,

Cares not for service, or but serves when prest,
Stays till we call, and then not often near;
But honest instinct comes a volunteer,
Sure never to o'ershoot, but just to hit ;
While still too wide or short is human wit,
Sure by quick nature happiness to gain,
Which heavier reason labors at in vain.
This too serves always, reason never long;
One must go right, the other may go wrong.
See then the acting and comparing powers
One in their nature, which are two in ours;
And reason raise o'er instinct as you can,
In this 't is God directs, in that 't is man.
Who taught the nations of the field and wood
To shun their poison and to choose their food?
Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,
Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand?
Who made the spider parallels design,
Sure as De Moivre, without rule or line?
Who bid the stork, Columbus-like, explore
Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before?
Who calls the council, states the certain day,
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?

"I taste of the fragrant flowers,

I respond to the warbling bowers,
And sweetly they charm the hours
Of my winding way;

But ceaseless still in quest
Of that everlasting rest
In my parent's boundless breast,
I hasten away!"

Knowest thou that dread abyss?
Is it a scene of bliss ?
O, rather cling to this, -

Sweet brooklet, stay!

"O, who shall fitly tell
What wonders there may dwell?
That world of mystery well

May strike dismay:

But I know 't is my parent's breast; There held I must needs be blest, And with joy to that promised rest I hasten away!"

SIR ROBERT GRANT.

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THE SEASIDE WELL.

"Waters flowed over mine head; then I said, I am cut off." -Lamentations, iii. 54.

ONE day I wandered where the salt sea-tide
Backward had drawn its wave,

And found a spring as sweet as e'er hillside
To wild-flowers gave.

Freshly it sparkled in the sun's bright look,
And mid its pebbles strayed,

As if it thought to join a happy brook
In some green glade.

But soon the heavy sea's resistless swell
Came rolling in once more,
Spreading its bitter o'er the clear sweet well
And pebbled shore.

Like a fair star thick buried in a cloud,
Or life in the grave's gloom,

The well, enwrapped in a deep watery shroud,
Sunk to its tomb.

As one who by the beach roams far and wide,
Remnant of wreck to save,

Again I wandered when the salt sea-tide
Withdrew its wave;

And there, unchanged, no taint in all its sweet,
No anger in its tone,

Still as it thought some happy brook to meet,
The spring flowed on.

While waves of bitterness rolled o'er its head,
Its heart had folded deep
Within itself, and quiet fancies led,
As in a sleep;

Till, when the ocean loosed his heavy chain,
And gave it back to day,

Calmly it turned to its own life again
And gentle way.

Happy, I thought, that which can draw its life
Deep from the nether springs,

Yet absent wounds an author's honest fame;
Who can your merit selfishly approve,
And show the sense of it without the love;
Who has the vanity to call you friend,
Yet wants the honor, injured, to defend ;
Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,
And, if he lie not, must at least betray;

Safe 'neath the pressure, tranquil mid the strife, Who to the Dean and silver bell can swear,

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And sees at Canons what was never there;
Who reads but with a lust to misapply,
Make satire a lampoon, and fiction lie ;

for the life its power and freshness brings A lash like mine no honest man shall dread, Down from the sky.

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With crushing chilluess fall,

But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.

ALEXANDER POPE

PROFUSION.

FROM "MORAL ESSAYS."

AT Timon's villa let us pass a day,

From secret wells let sweetness rise, nor change Where all cry out, "What sums are thrown

my heart to gall!

away!

So proud, so grand; of that stupendous air,

When sore thy hand doth press, and waves of Soft and agreeable come never there.

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Greatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught
As brings all Brobdignag before your thought.
To compass this, his building is a town,
His pond an ocean, his parterre a down:
Who but must laugh, the master when he sees,
A puny insect, shivering at a breeze!
Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!
The whole, a labored quarry above ground.
Two Cupids squirt before: a lake behind
Improves the keenness of the northern wind.
His gardens next your admiration call,
On every side you look, behold the wall!
No pleasing intricacies intervene,
No artful wildness to perplex the scene;
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
And half the platform just reflects the other.
The suffering eye inverted nature sees,
Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees;
With here a fountain, never to be played;
And there a summer-house, that knows no shade:
Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers;
There gladiators fight, or die in flowers;
Unwatered see the drooping sea-horse mourn,
And swallows roost in Nilus' dusty urn.

My lord advances with majestic mien,
Smit with the mighty pleasure, to be seen;
But soft - by regular approach
not yet
First through the length of yon hot terrace sweat;
And when up ten steep slopes you've dragged
your thighs,.

Just at his study door he 'll bless your eyes.

His study with what authors is it stored? In books, not authors, curious is my lord;

To all their dated backs he turns you round;
These Aldus printed, those Du Sueil has bound!
Lo, some are vellum, and the rest as good
For all his lordship knows, but they are wood.
For Locke or Milton 't is in vain to look,
These shelves admit not any modern book.

And now the chapel's silver bell you hear,
That summons you to all the pride of prayer :
Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,
Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven.
On painted ceilings you devoutly stare,
Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,
Or gilded clouds in fair expansion lie,
And bring all paradise before your eye.
To rest the cushion and soft dean invite,
Who never mentions hell to ears polite.

But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call; A hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall: The rich buffet well-colored serpents grace, And gaping Tritons spew to wash your face. Is this a dinner? this a genial room? No, 't is a temple, and a hecatomb. A solemn sacrifice, performed in state, You drink by measure, and to minutes eat. So quick retires each flying course, you'd swear Sancho's dread doctor and his wand were there. Between each act the trembling salvers ring, From soup to sweet wine, and God bless the king. In plenty starving, tantalized in state, And complaisantly helped to all I hate, Treated, caressed, and tired, I take my leave, Sick of his civil pride from morn to eve; I curse such lavish cost, and little skill, And swear no day was ever passed so ill.

HUMANITY.

ALEXANDER POPE.

FROM "THE WINTER WALK AT NOON."

I WOULD not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polished manners and fine

sense,

Yet wanting sensibility) the man

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarned,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight,
And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes,
A visitor unwelcome, into scenes
Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove,
The chamber, or refectory, may die :
A necessary act incurs no blame.

Not so when, held within their proper bounds,
And guiltless of offense, they range the air,

Or take their pastime in the spacious field:
There they are privileged; and he that hunts
Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong,
Disturbs the economy of Nature's realm,
Who, when she formed, designed them an abode.
The sum is this: If man's convenience, health,
Or safety interfere, his rights and claims
Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs.
Else they are all the meanest things that are
As free to live, and to enjoy that life,

As God was free to form them at the first,
Who in his sovereign wisdom made them all.
Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it too.

WILLIAM COWPER,

OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.
FROM "PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY."

SHAME upon thee, savage monarch-man, proud monopolist of reason;

Shame

upon creation's lord, the fierce ensanguined despot:

What, man! are there not enough, hunger and diseases and fatigue,

And yet must thy goad or thy thong add another sorrow to existence ?

What! art thou not content thy sin hath dragged down suffering and death

On the poor dumb servants of thy comfort, and yet must thou rack them with thy spite? The prodigal heir of creation hath gambled away his all,

Shall he add torment to the bondage that is galling his forfeit serfs?

The leader in nature's pæan himself hath marred her psaltery,

Shall he multiply the din of discord by over

straining all the strings?

The rebel hath fortified his stronghold, shutting in his vassals with him, Shall he aggravate the woes of the besieged by

oppression from within?

Thou twice-deformed image of thy Maker, thou hateful representative of Love,

For very shame be merciful, be kind unto the creatures thou hast ruined!

Earth and her million tribes are cursed for thy sake, Earth and her million tribes still writhe beneath thy cruelty:

Liveth there but one among the million that shall not bear witness against thee,

A pensioner of land or air or sea that hath not whereof it will accuse thee?

From the elephant toiling at a launch, to the shrew-mouse in the harvest-field, From the whale which the harpooner hath stricken, to the minnow caught upon a pin,

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