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Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,*
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes. O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill :
Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver: Hear, O hear!

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, Angels of rain and lightning; these are spread

On the blue surface of thy airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, e'en from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height-

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!

Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay

Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams
Beside a pumice isle in Baia's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Angel forms, who lay entranced

Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallambrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High over arch'd imbow'r.

Paradise Lost, Book I.

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms, and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

O wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

THE wind,

A sightless labourer, whistles at his task.

SHELLEY.

WORDSWORTH. The Excursion.

DONE the tales, to bed we creep,

By whisp'ring winds soon lull'd asleep.

L'Allegro.

Now gentle gales,

Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now art past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabean odours from the spicy shore

Of Araby the Blest; with such delay

Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league,
Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old ocean smiles.

Paradise Lost. Book IV.

LUXURIES.

Ir is an old and good distinction that some things are made only for our use, and some things for enjoyment. The first we value only for their use, the second we account our happiness. SHERLOCK. On Death.

Lear. O, REASON not the need; our basest beggars

Are in the poorest thing superfluous:

Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is cheap as beasts'; thou art a lady;
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous
Which scarcely keeps thee warm.

wear'st,

King Lear.

BOASTING.

BOASTING is but an art our fears to blind,
And with false terrors sink another mind.

BOLDNESS.

POPE. Iliad, Book XXII.

FEAR not, but be bold:

A decent boldness ever meets with friends,
Succeeds, and ev'n a stranger recommends.

CHASTITY.

POPE. Odyssey, Book VII.

'Tis chastity, my brother, chastity:

She that has that, is clad in complete steel;
And, like a quiver'd nymph with arrows keen,
May trace huge forests, and unharbour'd heaths,
Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds;
Where, through the sacred rays of chastity,
No savage fierce, bandit, or mountaineer,
Will dare to soil her virgin purity.

Yea, there where every desolation dwells,
By grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid shades,
She may pass on with unblench'd majesty,
Be it not done in pride, or in presumption.
Some say, no evil thing that walks by night,
In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen,
Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost
That breaks his magic chains at curfew time,
No goblin, or swart faery of the mine,
Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity.
Do ye believe me yet, or shall I call
Antiquity from the old schools of Greece
To testify the arms of chastity?

Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow,
Fair silver-shafted queen, for ever chaste,
Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness

And spotted mountain-pard, but set at naught

The frivolous bolt of Cupid; gods and men

Fear'd her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods.

What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield,

That wise Minerva wore, unconquer'd virgin,

Wherewith she freezed her foes to congeal'd stone,

But rigid looks of chaste austerity,

And noble grace that dash'd brute violence

With sudden adoration and blank awe?
So dear to heaven is saintly chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt;
And, in clear dream and solemn vision,
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear;
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind.

And turn it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal: but when lust,
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.

Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp,
Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres,
Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loth to leave the body that it loved,
And link'd itself by carnal sensuality
To a degenerate and degraded state.

Second Brother. How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbèd, as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,

Where no crude surfeit reigns.

MILTON. Comus.

Isabella.

AUTHORITY.

OH! 'tis excellent

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous

To use it like a giant.

There is not, in my opinion, a consideration more effectual to extinguish inordinate desires in the soul of man, than the notions of Plato and his followers upon that subject. They tell us that every passion which has been contracted by the soul during her residence in the body, remains with her in a separate state, and that the soul in the body and out of the body differs no more than the man does from himself when he is in his house or in open air.

Spectator.

Lucio. That's well said.

Isab. Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,

For every pelting, petty officer

Would use his heaven for thunder: nothing but thunder.

Merciful heaven!

Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,

Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,

Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man!

Dress'd in a little brief authority,*

Most ignorant of what he's most assured,

His glassy essence,-like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

GREATNESS.

Measure for Measure, Act II.

THOSE men only are truly great who place their ambition rather in acquiring to themselves the conscience of worthy enterprises, than in the prospect of glory which attends them. Spectator, No. 172.

SOME men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Twelfth Night.

"NOTHING," says Longinus, " can be great, the contempt of which is great."

THE superiority of some men is merely local. They are great, because their associates are little.

GREAT PLACE.

JOHNSON.

*

Ir is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self. Certainly, great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling they cannot find it; but if they think with

Nothing indeed but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man.

BURKE.

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