Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

any finite being. We are furnished with faculties (dull and weak as they are) to discover enough in the creatures to lead us to the knowledge of the Creator, and the knowledge of our duty; and we are fitted well enough with abilities to provide for the conveniences of living. These are our business in this world. But were our senses altered and made much quicker and acuter, the appearance and scheme of things would have quite another face to us; and I am apt to think would be inconsistent with our being, or at least well-being, in this part of the universe which we inhabit.

LOCKE. On the Understanding. ·

OUR noblest senses act by pairs;
Two eyes to see; to hear two ears;
Th' intelligences of the mind,
To wait upon the soul design'd.
But those that serve the body alone,
Are single, and confined to one.

THE SEA.

Hudibras, Part III., Canto 1.

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 can not all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths,-thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth :-there let him lay.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war-
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves,
which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters wash'd them power while they were free,
And many a tyrant since; their shores obey
The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts :-not so thou ;-
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play,
Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow:
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,-

Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving ;-boundless, endless, and sublime—
The image of Eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible, even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
Childe Harold, Canto IV.

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free;
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven is on the sea!
Listen the mighty being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder everlastingly.

WORDSWORTH.

THE Sea! the Sea! the open Sea!

That is the place where we all wish to be,
Rolling about on it merrily!

So all sing and say

By night and by day,

In the boudoir, the street, at the concert, and play,
In a sort of coxcombical roundelay ;-

You may roam through the city transversely or straight,
From Whitechapel-turnpike to Cumberland-gate,

And every young lady who strums a guitar,
Every mustachio'd shopman who smokes a cigar,
With affected devotion
Promulgates the notion

Of being a Rover and Child of the Ocean,
Whate'er their age, sex, or condition may be,
They all of them long for the wide, wide Sea.
But however they dote,

[blocks in formation]

The wessel they woyage in has made half her way
Between Sheerness Point, and the pier at Herne Bay,
Let the wind meet the tide in the slightest degree,
They'll be all of them heartily sick of the Sea.

Ingoldsby Legends.

FRIENDSHIP.

HARD is the doubt, and difficult to deem,
When all three kinds of Love together meet,
And do dispute the heart with pow'r extreme,
Whither shall weigh the balance down; to weet,
The dear affection unto kindred sweet,

Or raging fire of love to woman-kind,

Or zeal of friends combined with virtues meet,
But of them all, the band of virtuous mind

Me seems the gentle heart should most assured bind.

For natural affection soon doth cesse,

And quenched is with Cupid's greater flame;
But faithful friendship doth them both suppresse,
And them with mayst'ring discipline doth tame
Through thoughts aspyring to eternall fame:

For as the soule doth rule the earthly masse
And all the service of the body frame;

So love of soule doth love of bodie passe

No less than perfect gold surmounts the meanest brass.
Faery Queen, Book IV., Canto 9.

FRIENDSHIP is Love without its flowers or veil.

HARE. Guesses at Truth.

THE next position defines Friendship by an equality of good offices, and benevolent affections. But thus to balance the kindnesses on both sides, is to make too mean, too particular an estimate of it. True Friendship appears to me more noble and generous, and is not over scrupulous, lest more favours be returned than have been received.* For there is no occasion to fear, that any part of our good offices should be lost or fall to the ground, or that more than what is reasonable be expended on friendship.

CICERO.

FRIENDSHIP between men, when it deserves the name, is the slow growth of mutual respect, † is of a nature calm and simple,‡ professes nothing and exacts nothing, is, above all careful to be considerate in its expectations, and to keep at a distinct distance from the romantic, the visionary, and the impossible. The torrid zone, with its heats and its tempests, is left to the inexperience of youth, or to the love that exists between the sexes; the temperate, with its sunshine, its zephyrs, cheerful noon, and calm evening, is the proper and the only region of manly friendship.

[blocks in formation]

A LONG life may be passed without finding a friend in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose

* He that doth the kindness hath the noblest pleasure of the two. + Shepherd. After all, what blessing is in this world like a rational, wellfounded, stedfast friendship between twa people who hae seen some little o' human life-felt some little o' its troubles-kept fast hold o' a gude character, and are doing a' they can for the benefit o' their fellow-creatures.

Noctes Ambrosianæ.

Friendships-which, like the shadows of evening, increase even till the setting of the sun.

In love we grow acquainted because we are already attached, in friendship we must know each other before we love. TALLEYRAND.

A

opinion we can value at once for its justice and sincerity. weak man, however honest, is not qualified to judge. A man of the world, however penetrating, is not fit to counsel. Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings, because they are his own. Friends are tender, and unwilling to give pain, or they are interested and fearful to offend.

NE certes can that friendship long endure,
However gay, and goodly be the style,

That doth ill cause or evil end enure,

JOHNSON.

For virtue is the band that bindeth hearts most sure.

Faery Queen, Book IV., Canto 2.

He was much in my heart, and I believe I was in his to the

[blocks in formation]
« ForrigeFortsæt »