The poet in a golden clime is born,
With golden stars above,
Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love.
Tennyson.
Take the sweet poetry of life away,
And what remains behind?
There is a pleasure in poetic pains,
Which only poets know.
Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth, and pure delight, by heavenly lays.
Poet esteem thy noble part,
Still listen, still record;
Sacred historian of the heart,
And moral nature's lord.
A drainless renown
Of light is poesy: 'Tis the supreme of power:
The might half slumbering on its own right arm.
John Keats.
Oh. never had the poet's lute a hope,
An aim so glorious as it now may have,
In this our social state, where petty cares
And mercenary interests only look
Upon the present's littleness, and shrink
From the bold future, and the stately past.
"Tis the poet's gift
To melt these frozen waters.
I see poets darting in splendour,
Bright birds from the tropic of mind.
Why mock at each self-deem'd immortal?
To-day he is lord of his kind.
Poetry is itself a thing of God;
He made his prophets poets, and the more
We feel of poesy, do we become
Like God in love and power-under makers.
POLEMICS. POLITICIAN. PORT.
POLEMICS.
EACH staunch polemic, stubborn as a rock,
Came whip and spur.
Polemics with religion play
As truant children cast
From hand to hand the flying ball,
But to be lost at last.
POLITICIAN.
YOUR politicians
Have evermore a taint of vanity;
As hasty still to show and boast a plot,
As they are greedy to contrive it.
A politician must like lightning melt
The very marrow, and not taint the skin;
His ways must not be seen.
Chapman.
Dull rogues affect the politician's part,
And learn to nod, and smile, and shrug with art;-
Who nothing has to lose, the war bewails;
And he, who nothing pays, at taxes rails.-Congreve.
A politician, Proteus-like, must alter
His face and habit; and, like water, seem
Of the same colour that the vessel is
That doth contain it, varying his form,
With the chameleon, at each object's change.
PORT.
LONG have they voyaged o'er the distant seas;
And what a heart-delight they feel at last―
So many toils, so many dangers past-
To view the port desir'd, he only knows
Who on the stormy deep for many a day
Hath toss'd, aweary of his ocean way,
And watch'd all-anxious every wind that blows.
Southey.
POSSESSION. POSTERITY. POTENTATES. 499
POSSESSION.
THOSE possessions short-lived are,
Into the which we come by war.
Born to himself, by no possession led,
By freedom fostered, and by fortune fed.
Beware what spirit rages in your breast,
For ten inspired, ten thousand are possest.
POSTERITY.
HENCE, lastly, spring cares of posterities,
For things their kind would everlasting make, Hence is it that old men do plant young trees, The fruit whereof another age shall take.-Davies.
Daughter of time, sincere posterity,
Always new-born, yet no man knows thy birth, The arbitress of pure sincerity,
Yet changeable (like Proteus) on the earth,
Sometime in plenty, sometime join'd with dearth.
Always to come, yet always present here,
Whom all run after, none come after here.
Impartial judge of all, save present state,
Truth's idioms of the things are past,
But still pursuing present things with hate,
And more injurious at the first than last,
Preserving others while their own do waste:
True treasurer of all antiquity,
Whom all desire, yet never one could see.
From England's Parnassus.
Each potentate as wary fear, or strength,
Or emulation urged, his neighbour's bounds
Invaded.
POTENTATES.
KINGS and mightiest potentates must die.-Shakspere.
POVERTY.
POOR and content is rich, and rich enough;
But riches endless are as poor as winter,
To him that ever fears he shall be poor.-Shakspere.
To mortal man great loads allotted be,
But of all packs, no pack like poverty.
Be honest poverty thy boasted wealth;
So shall thy friendships be sincere tho' few;
So shall thy sleep be sound, thy waking cheerful.
Havard.
O, blissful poverty!
Nature, too partial, to thy lot assigns
Health, freedom, innocence, and downy peace-
Her real goods-and only mocks the great
With empty pageantries.
Many a Prince is worse, Who, proud of pedigree, is poor of purse.
O, the poor,
Are the poor's almoners, else would die crowds
That none know how they live, how life in them
Still feebly lurks from morn to ghastly eve,
From eve to haggard morn.
God help the poor, who in lone valleys dwell,
Or by the hills where whin and heather grow!
Theirs is a story sad indeed to tell;
Yet little cares the world, and less 't would know
About the toil and want they undergo.
The wearying loom must have them up at morn;
They wake till worn-out nature will have sleep;
They taste, but are not fed. The snow drifts deep
Around the fireless cot and blocks the door;
The night-storm howls a dirge across the moor-
And shall they perish thus, oppressed and lone?
Shall toil and famine hopeless thus be borne?
No, God will yet arise and help the poor!
Samuel Bamford.
POWER.
UNMOV'D with all the glittering pomp of power,
He took with joy, but laid it down with more.
Rowe.
Power! 'tis the favourite attribute of gods,
Who look with smiles on men who can aspire
To copy them.
Martyn.
Still she spake on, and still she spake of power,
Which in all action is the end of all;
Power fitted to the season; wisdom-bred
And throned of wisdom-from all neighbour crown
Alliance and allegiance, till thy hand
Fail from the sceptre-staff.
Tennyson.
Love may die and hatred slumber,
And their mem'ry will decay,
As the watered garden recks not
Of the drought of yesterday.
But the dream of power, once broken,
What shall give repose again?
What shall charm the serpent furies,
Coiled around the maddening brain?
W. E. Aytoun.
Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals nor forts. The warrior's name would be a name abhorred, And every nation that should lift again Its hand against a brother, on its forehead Should wear for evermore the curse of Cain. Longfellow.
They tell thee in their dreaming school
Of power from old dominion hurled,
When rich and poor with juster rule,
Shall share the altered world.
Alas! since time itself began,
This subject hath but fooled the hour;
Each hour that ripens power in man,
But subjects man to power.
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