320

HEAVEN-HELL.

11. My heart is like a lonely bird,
That sadly sings,

Brooding upon its nest unheard,
With folded wings.

12. Oh! could we read the human heart,

MRS. A. B. WELBY.

Its strange, mysterious depths explore,
What tongue could tell, or pen impart
The riches of its hidden lore?

1.

HEAVEN-HELL.

Shall we serve heaven

With less respect than we do minister
To our gross selves?

2. Divines and dying men may talk of hell, But in my heart her several torments dwell.

3. There is perpetual spring, perpetual youth; No joint-benumbing cold, nor scorching heat, Famine nor age, have any being there.

SHAKSPEARE.

SHAKSPEARE.

MASSINGER AND DECKER.

4. Heaven's the perfection of all that can
Be said or thought, riches, delight, or harmony,
Health, beauty; and all these not subject to
The waste of time, but in their height eternal.

5. Hell, their fit habitation, fraught with fire

Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain.

SHIRLEY.

MILTON'S Paradise Lost.

6. Here we may reign secure; and in my choice,

To reign is worth ambition, though in hell;
Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.

MILTON'S Paradise Lost.

7.

8.

A black and hollow vault,

Where day is never seen; there shines no sun,
But flaming horror of consuming fires;

A lightless sulphur, chok'd with smoky fogs
Of an infected darkness.

In this place

JOHN FORD.

Dwell many thousand thousand sundry sorts
Of never-dying deaths: there damned souls
Roar without pity; there are gluttons fed
With toads and adders; there is burning oil
Pour'd down the drunkard's throat; the usurer
Is forc'd to sup whole draughts of molten gold;
There is the murderer for ever stabb'd,

Yet can he never die; there lies the wanton
On racks of burning steel, while in his soul
He feels the torment of his raging lust.

JOHN FORD.

HELL.

(See HEAVEN.)

HERMIT-SOLITUDE, &c.

1. The shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,
I better brook than flourishing peopled towns:
There can I sit alone, unseen of any,
And to the nightingale's complaining notes
Tune my distresses, and record my woes.

2.

And wisdom's self

Oft seeks for sweet retir'd solitude,

Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,

SHAKSPEARE.

She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings.

MILTON'S Comus.

322

HERMIT-SOLITUDE, &c.

3. Retiring from the populous noise, I seek This unfrequented place to find some ease.

4. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

5. How happy is the lonely vestal's lot,
The world forgetting, by the world forgot!

MILTON.

GRAY'S Elegy.

POPE'S Eloisa.

6. Far in a wild, unknown to public view,
From youth to age a reverend hermit grew;
The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell,
His food the fruits, his drinks the crystal well;
Remote from man, with God he pass'd his days,
Prayer all his business-all his pleasure praise.

7. O sacred solitude! divine retreat!

Choice of the prudent! envy of the great!
By thy pure stream, or in thy waving shade,
We court fair Wisdom, that celestial maid.

8. For solitude, however some may rave,
Seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave-
A sepulchre in which the living lie,
Where all good qualities grow sick and die.

9. Oh solitude! where are the charms

That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,

Than reign in this horrible place!
I am out of humanity's reach,

PARNELL.

YOUNG.

COWPER'S Retirement.

I must finish my journey alone;
Never hear the sweet music of speech-

I start at the sound of my own.

COWPER.

10. Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness—
Some boundless contiguity of space,

Where rumour of oppression and deceit
Might never reach me more! My ear is pain'd,
My soul is sick, with every day's report

Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd.

11. Unhappy he, who from the first of joys, Society, cut off, is left alone

Amid this world of death.

COWPER

12.

THOMSON'S Seasons.

To view, alone,

The fairest scenes of land and deep,

With none to listen, and reply

To thoughts with which my heart beat high,
Were irksome; for, whate'er my mood,

In sooth, I love not solitude.

BYRON'S Bride of Abydos.

13. The lonely spider's thin gray pall Waves slowly, widening o'er the wall.

BYRON'S Giaour.

14. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not man the less, but nature more
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

BYRON'S Childe Harold.

15. To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind.

In solitude

BYRON'S Childe Harold.

Small power the nipt affections have to grow.

BYRON'S Childe Harold.

324

HISTORIAN - HISTORY.

17. If from society we learn to live,

"T is solitude should teach us how to die.

BYRON'S Childe Harold.

18. A populous solitude of bees and birds.

BYRON'S Childe Harold.

19. Oh, that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her.

BYRON'S Childe Harold.

20. They dwelt in calm and silent solitude, Where meaner spirits never dare intrude.

CARLOS WILCOX.

21. There have been holy men who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave
Their lives to thought and prayer;
.... And there have been holy men,

Who deem'd it were not well to pass life thus.

W. C. BRYANT.

HISTORIAN - HISTORY.

1. "Tis a great fault in a chronologer

To turn parasite; an absolute historian

Should be in fear of none; neither should he
Write any thing more than truth for friendship,
Or else for hate.

2. Some write a narrative of wars, and feats
Of heroes little known, and call the rant
An history; describe the man of whom
His own coevals took but little note,

And paint his person, character, and views,

As they had known him from his mother's womb.

Lingua.

COWPER'S Task.