Even to the delicacy of their hands
There was resemblance, such as true blood wears.
The noble ranks of fashion and birth
Are fetter'd by courtly rule;
They dare not rend the shackles that tend
To form the knave and fool.
And what if court or castle vaunt
Its children loftier born?
Who heeds the silken tassel's vaunt
Beside the golden corn?
They ask not for the courtly toil
Of ribbon'd knights and earls,
The daughters of the virgin soil,
Our freeborn Yankee girls!
Though they be never so ridiculous,
Nay, let them be unmanly, yet are follow'd.
Shaks. Henry VIII
All with one consent, praise new-born gauds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past
Shaks, Troilus and Cressida.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But, when they seldom come, they wish'd for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part II.
Did ever Proteus, Merlin, any witch,
Transform themselves so strangely as the rich! Well, but the poor-the poor have the same itch, O. W. Holmes. They change their weekly barber, weekly news, Prefer a new japanner to their shoes;
There's no power
In ancestry to make the foolish wise,
The ignorant learn'd, the cowardly and base
Deserving our respect as brave and good.
All men feel this: ner dares the despot say
His fiat can endow with truth the soul,
Or, like a pension, on the heart bestow
The virtues current in the realms above.
Discharge their garrets, move their beds, and run
(They know not whither) in a chaise and one;
They hire their sculler, and when once abroad,
Grow sick, and damn the climate-like a lord.
Papillia, wedded to her amorous spark,
Sighs for the shades-" How charming is a park ?"
Hence man's best riches must be gain'd-not A park is purchas'd, but the fair he sees
His noblest name deserv'd, and not deriv'd.
Mrs. Hale's Ormond Grosvenor.
The ruffian warriors of the olden times,
Boisterous as winter, and with minds as hard
And barren as the frozen wilderness,
Did such as these possess exclusive right
To patent Nature for Nobility?
And to their silly, sinning offspring grant
A perpetuity of dignities
To the end of time? A charter of that power
Which only should be plac'd in hands that wield
The public destinies for public good;
And a monopoly of fame and praise
Which talents and true nobleness should gain?
Mrs. Hale's Ormond Grosvenor.
Go, then, to heroes, sages if allied,
Go! trace the scroll, but not with eye of pride,
Where Truth depicts their glories as they shone,
And leaves a blank where should have been your
I have liv'd in cities from my birth, Where all was noise, and life, and varying scene, Recurrent news which set all men agape
New faces, and new friends, and shows and revels.
Which things drive on the wheels of time apace
Mingled in constant action and quick change,
Ah, wretch! believ'd the spouse of God in vain,
Confess'd within the slave of love and man
Pope's Eloisa
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot;
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n;
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to heav'n:
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
Pope's Eloisa.
Canst thou forget that sad, that solemn day,
When victims at yon altar's foot we lay?
Canst thou forget what tears that moment fell,
When, warm in youth, I bade the world farewell?
As with cold lips I kiss'd the sacred veil,
'Tis not the many oaths, that make the truth;
But the plain single vow, that is vowed true.
Shaks. All's Well
The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows;
They are polluted offerings, more abhorr'd
Than spotted livers in the sacrifice.
Shaks. Troilus and Cressida.
The vows of women
Of no more bondage be, to where they are made,
Than they are to their virtues; which is nothing.
Shaks. Cymbeline
Look thou be true; do not give dalliance
Too much rein; the strongest oaths are straw
To the fire i' the blood; be more abstemious,
Shaks. Tempest
The shrines all trembled and the lamps grew Or else, good-night your vow.
Heaven scarce believ'd the conquest it survey'd,
And saints with wonder heard the vows I made.
Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,
Renounce my love, my life, myself, and you;
Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he
Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.
Pope's Eloisa.
Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains
Repentant sighs and voluntary pains:
Ye rugged rocks, which holy knees have worn;
Ye grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid thorn!
Shrines! where their vigils pale-ey'd virgins keep;
And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep!
Though cold like you, unmov'd and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone.
Pope's Eloisa.
Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom,
Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!
There stern religion quench'd th' unwilling flame,
There died the best of passions, love and fame.
Pope's Eloisa.
Love, to her ear, was but a name,
Combin'd with vanity and shame;
Her hopes, her fears, her joys, were all
Bounded within the cloister wall.
There, those parted lips,
Prayer could but give such voiceless eloquence,
Shining like snow her clasp'd and earnest hands,
She seems a dedicated nun, whose heart
Is God's own altar. By her side I feel
As in some holy place.
Your oaths are past, and now subscribe your name
That his own hand may strike his honour down,
That violates the smallest branch herein.
O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
Shaks. Romeo and Juliet.
Come, swear it, damn thyself,
Lest being like one of heaven, the devils themselves
Should fear to seize thee: therefore be double
damn'd,
Swear-thou art honest.
Shaks. Othelle
Thou seest, that all the grace that she hath left,
Is, that she will not add to her damnation
A sin of perjury: she not denies it.
This in the name of heaven, I promise here:
The which, if he be pleased, I shall perform,
I do beseech your majesty may salve
The long grown wounds of my intemperance:
If not, the end of life cancels all bonds,
And I will die a hundred thousand deaths,
Ere break the smallest parcel of this vow.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part I.
The oath in any way or form you please,
I stand resolv'd to take it.
Massinger's Duke of Milan.
Oaths were not purpos'd more than law
To keep the good and just in awe,
But to confine the bad and sinful,
Like moral cattle, in a pin fold.
That saints may claim a dispensation
To swear and forswear on occasion,
I doubt not but it will appear
With pregnant light: the point is clear.
Oaths are but words, and words but wind;
Too feeble instruments to bind.
An oath is a recognizance to heaven,
Binding us over in the courts above,
To plead to the indictment of our crimes,
That those who 'scape this world should suffer
there.
Southern's Oroonoko.
OBITUARY.
From his cradle,
He was a scholar, and a ripe, and good one;
Exceeding wise, fair-spoken and persuading;
Lofty and sour, to them that lov'd him not;
But to those men who sought him, sweet as summer
And to add greater honours to his age
Than man could give, he died, fearing God.
Shaks. Henry VIII.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much virtue as could die,
Which, when alive, did vigour give
To as much beauty as could live.
Had the number of her days Butler's Hudibras. Been as complete as was her praise, Nature and Fate had had no strife In giving limit to her life.
He that imposes an oath makes it,
Not he that for convenience takes it:
Then how can any man be said
To break an oath he never made.
Milton's Miscellaneous Poems.
Gentle Lady, may thy grave
Butler's Hudibras. Peace and quiet ever have.
As the bird to its sheltering nest,
When the storm on the hills is abroad, So her spirit hath flown from this world of unrest, To repose on the bosom of God.
William H. Burleigh. The strife is o'er! The lov'd of years, To whom our yearning hearts had grown, Hath left us, with life's gathering fears
To struggle darkly and alone;
Gone, with the wealth of love which dwelt,
Heart-kept, with holy thoughts and high
Gione, as the clouds of evening melt
Leyond the dark and solemn sky.
As seek to soften that (than which what's harder?)—
Shaks. Merchant of Venice.
Your blund'rer is as sturdy as a rock,
The creature is so sure to kick and bite,
A muleteer's the man to set him right.
First appetite enlists him truth's sworn foe,
Then obstinate self-will confirms him so.
Tell him he wanders; that his error leads
To fatal ill; that though the path he treads
Be flow'ry, and he see no cause of fear,
Death and the pains of hell attend him there.
In vain the slave of arrogance and pride,
He has no hearing on the prudent side.
His still refuted quirks he still repeats;
New rais'd objections with new quibbles meets;
Till sinking in the quicksand he defends,
He dies disputing, and the contest ends.
Who, from the toil and tumult of their lives, Steal to look down where nought but ocean strives! Byron's Island
What was it that I lov'd so well about my childhood's home?
It was the wide and wave-lash'd shore, the black rocks crown'd with foam!
It was the sea-gull's flapping wing, all trackless in its flight,
Its screaming note that welcom'd on the fierce and stormy night!
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form The wild heath had its flowers and moss, the Glasses itself in tempests: in all time, forest had its trees,
Calm or convuls'd—in breeze, or gale, or storm, Which bending to the evening wind, made music Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime in the breeze.
Dark-heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime But earth, ha! ha! I laugh e'en now, earth had
The image of eternity-the throne
Of the invisible, even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
No scene half bright enough to win my young heart from the sea!
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, No! 't was the ocean, vast and deep, the fathomByron's Childe Harold.
Oh! how I lov'd the waters, and even long'd to be
A bird, a boat, or any thing that dwelt upon the
Eliza Cook's Poems.
Great Source of Being, Beauty, Light, and Love!
Creator! Lord! the waters worship Thee!
Ere thy creative smile had sown the flowers,
Ere the glad hills leap'd upward, or the earth
With swelling bosom, waited for her child;
Anon. Before eternal Love had lit the sun,
Byron's Corsair.
Ocean, thou dreadful and tumultuous home
Of dangers, at eternal war with man!
Death's capital where most he domineers,
With all his chosen terrors frowning round,
Wide opening and loud roaring still for more,
Too faithful mirror! how dost thou reflect
The melancholy face of humar. life.
"Tis lone on the waters, When eve's mournful bell
Sends forth to the sunset
A note of farewell!
Or Time had trac'd his dial-plate in stars,
The joyful anthem of the Ocean flow'd;--
And Chaos like a frighten'd felon fled,
While on the Deep the Holy Spirit mov'd.
Mrs. Hale's Poems
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