Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires
The young, makes weariness forget his toil,
And fear her danger: opens a new world
When this, the present, falls.

"T is done! dread winter spreads his latest glooms,
And reigns tremendous o'er the conquer'd year.
How dead the vegetable kingdom lies!
How dumb the tuneful! horror wide extends
Byron's Sardanapalus. His desolate domain! Behold, fond man!
See here thy pictur'd life: pass some few years,
Thy flowering spring, thy summer's ardent
strength,

Let the crystal beaker flame and shine,
Brimming o'er with the draught divine?
Not from the Rhine-

Not from fields of Burgundian vine
Bring me the bright Olympian wine!
J. Bayard Taylor's Poems.

Wine-bring wine
Flushing high with its growth divine,
In the crystal depth of my soul to shine :
Whose glow was caught

From the warmth which Fancy's summer brought
To the vintage fields in the Land of Thought!
J. Bayard Taylor.

Rich and free

To my thirsting soul will the goblet be,
Pour'd by the Hebe Poesy.

WINTER.

Thy sober autumn fading into age,

And pale concluding winter comes at last,
And shuts the scene.

Thomson's Seasons.

Behold, the joyous winter days,
Frosty, succeed; and thro' the blue serene
For sight too fine, the ethereal mitre flies;
Killing infectious damps, and the spent air
Storing afresh with elemental life.

Thomson.

See winter comes, to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train;
Vapours, and clouds, and storms.

Thomson's Seasons.

Oh winter! ruler of th' inverted year,

J. Bayard Taylor. Thy scatter'd hair with sleet-like ashes fill'd,

Lastly came winter, clothed all in frize,
Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill;
Whilst on his hoary beard his breath did freeze,
And the dull drops that from his purple bill
As from a limbeck did adown distill;
In his right hand a tipped staff he held,
With which his feeble steps he stayed still,
For he was faint with cold and weak with eld,
That scarce his loosed limbs he able was to weld.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.

The wrathful winter hast'ning on apace,
With blust'ring blasts had all ybar'd the treen,
And old Saturnus with his frosty face
With chilling cold had pierc'd the tender green;
The mantles rent wherein enwrapped been
The gladsome groves, that now lay overthrown,
The tapets torn, and ev'ry tree blown down.
Earl of Dorset in the Mirror for Magistrates.

Do not scorn

My age, nor think, 'cause I appear forlorn,
I serve for no use; 't is my sharper breath
Does purge gross exhalations from the earth:
My frosts and snows do purify the air
From choking fogs, make the sky clear and fair:
And though by nature cold and chill I be,
Yet I am warm in bounteous charity.

Ford and Decker's Sun's Darling.

Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks
Fring'd with a beard made white with other snows
Than those of age; thy forehead wrapt in clouds,
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne,
A sliding car indebted to no wheels,
But urg'd by storms along its slipp'ry way;
I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st,
And dreaded as thou art.

So get you hence in peace and tell the Dauphin, | Wer 't possible that wit could turn a penny,
His jest will savour but of shallow wit,
When thousands weep, more than did laugh at it.

Poets might then grow rich as well as any:
For 't is not wit to have a great estate,
The blind effect of fortune and of fate;
Since oft we see a coxcomb dull and vain,
Brim full of cash, yet empty in his brain:
Nor is it wit that makes the lawyer prize
His dazzled gown; its knavery in disguise:
Nor is it wit that drills the statesman on
To waste the sweets of life, so quickly gone :
For 't is not wit that brings a man to hanging,
That goes not further than a harmless banging.
Buckingham.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please!
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won,
To that unfeather'd two legg'd thing—a son.
Dryden.

With short plummets heav'n's deep well we sound,
That vast abyss where human wit is drown'd,
In our small skiff we must not launch too far;
We here but coasters, not discoverers, are.

Dryden.

How hard soe'er it be to bridle wit,
Yet memory oft no less requires the bit.
Butler. How many hurried by its force away,
For ever in the land of gossips stray!
Usurp the province of the nurse to lull,
Without her privilege of being dull!
Tales upon tales they arise ten stories high,
Without regard to use or symmetry.

Butler.

Butler.

Stilling fleet.

I never had to do with wicked spirits;
But you that are polluted with your lusts,
Stain'd with the guiltless blood of innocents,
Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices,—
Because you want the grace that others have,
You judge it straight a thing impossible
To compass wonders, but by help of devils.
Shaks. Henry VI. Part I.
I spy'd a wither'd hag with age grown double,
Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself;
Her eyes with scalding rheum were gall'd and red,
Cold palsy shook her head, her hands seem'd
wither'd,

And on her crook'd shoulders had she wrap't
The tatter'd remnants of an old strip'd hanging,
Which serv'd to keep her carcass from the cold.
Otway's Orphan.

These midnight hags,

By force of potent spells, of bloody characters,
And conjurations, horrible to hear,

And sooth to say, it is fool-hardy thing
Rashly to whiten creatures so divine?
For demigods they be, and first did spring
From heaven, though graft in frailness feminine.
Spenser.

Men's due deserts each reader may recite,

For men of men do make a goodly show,
But women's works can never come to light;

No mortal man their famous acts may know;
No writer will a little time bestow,
The worthy acts of women to repeat;

Call fiends and spectres from the yawning deep, Though their renown and the deserts be great. And set the ministers of hell at work.

Rowe's Jane Shore.

She said, and rais'd her skinny hand
As in defiance to high heaven,
And stretch'd her long lean finger forth,
And spake aloud the words of power.

Southey's Thalaba,

I have led

A life too stirring for those vague beliefs
That superstition builds in solitude.

Miss. Landon.

Our witches are no longer old,
And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold,

But
young and gay and laughing creatures,
With the heart's sunshine on their features;

Their sorcery the light which dances
When the raised lid unveils its glances,
And the low-breathed and gentle tone
Faintly responding unto ours,
Soft, dream-like as a fairy's moan,
Above its nightly closing flowers.

WOMAN.

Mirror for Magistrates.

A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And, while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip, or touch one drop of it.
Shaks. Taming the Shrew.
Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world;
But that our soft conditions, and our hearts,
Should well agree with our external parts.
Shaks. Taming the Shrew.
Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible;
Thou- stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless,
Shaks. Henry VI. Part III.

'Tis beauty, that doth oft make women proud:
But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small :
'Tis virtue that doth make them most admir'd;
The contrary doth make thee wonder'd at.

Shaks. Henry VI. Part 111
A woman impudent and mannish grown
Whittier. Is not more loath'd, than an effeminate man
In time of action.

Ye gentle ladies! in whose sovereign power
Love hath the glory of his kingdom left,
And the hearts of men, as your eternal dower,
In iron chains of liberty bereft,
Delivered hath unto your hands by gift,
Be well aware how you the same do usc,
That pride do not to tyranny you lift,
Lest if men you of cruelty accuse,
He from you take that chiefdom which ye do
abuse.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.

Shaks. Troilus and Cressida.
Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,
Misprising what they look on; and her wit
Values itself so highly, that to her

All matter else seems weak: she cannot love,
Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
She is so self-endear'd.

Shaks. Much Ado about Nothing
We cannot fight for love as men may do;
We should be woo'd, and were not made to wor
Shaks. Midsummer Night's Dream.