Whene'er a noble deed is wrought,
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought,
Our hearts, in glad surprise,

To higher levels rise.

Longfellow: Santa Filomena.

Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping, but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own;
Then wilt thou see it gleam in many eyes,
Then will pure light around thy path be shed,
And thou wilt nevermore be sad and lone.

Obedience; see Government and Law.

Lowell: Sonnets.

Son of heav'n and earth,

Attend: That thou art happy, owe to God;
That thou continuest such, owe to thyself,
That is, to thy obedience; therein stand.

Milton: Paradise Lost.

Wouldst thou approve thy constancy, approve
First thy obedience.

Milton: Paradise Lost.

One day thou wilt be blest:

So still obey the guiding hand that fends

Thee safely through these wonders for sweet ends.

Keats: Endymion.

Great may he be who can command

And rule with just and tender sway;

Yet is diviner wisdom taught

Better by him who can obey.

Adelaide A. Procter.

Ocean; see Nature.

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 un-

known.

Byron: Childe Harold.

Time writes no wrinkles on thine azure brow,-
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

The free

Byron: Childe Harold.

Mighty, music-haunted sea.

Anna Katharine Green: On the Threshold.

The land is dearer for the sea,

The ocean for the shore.

Lucy Larcom: On the Beach.

The sea

Waits ages in its bed till some one wave

Out of the multitudinous mass, extends

The empire of the whole.

Browning: Paracelsus.

The warm sea fondled with the shore,

And laid his white face on the sands.

Joaquin Miller: The Last Taschastas.

I love thee, Ocean, and delight in thee,
Thy color, motion, vastness,-all the eye
Takes in from shore, and on the tossing waves;
Nothing escapes me, not the least of weeds
That shrivels and blackens on the barren sand.
R. H. Stoddard: Hymn to the Sea.

Opportunity; see Action and Decision.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds,
Make ill deeds done!

Shakespeare: King John.

O Opportunity! thy guilt is great:

'Tis thou that execut'st the traitor's treason;
Thou sett'st the wolf where he the lamb may get;
Whoever plots the sin, thou point'st the season;
'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason.
Shakespeare: Rape of Lucrece.

Oratory; see Argument and Advice.

His tongue

Dropp'd manna, and could make the worst appear

The better reason, to perplex and dash

Maturest counsels.

Milton: Paradise Lost.

Thence to the famous orators repair,

Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democracy,

Shook the Arsenal, and fulmined over Greece,
To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne.

Milton: Paradise Regained.

Power above powers! O heavenly eloquence!

That, with the strong rein of commanding words,

Dost manage, guide, and master th' eminence
Of men's affections, more than all their swords!

And 'tis remarkable, that they

Talk most, who have the least to say.

His words seem'd oracles

Daniel.

Prior: Alma.

That pierc'd their bosoms; and each man would

turn

And gaze in wonder on his neighbor's face,

That with the like dumb wonder answer'd him.
You could have heard

The beating of your pulses while he spoke.

George Croly.

Hark to that shrill, sudden shout,

The cry of an applauding multitude,
Swayed by some loud-voiced orator who wields
The living mass as if he were its soul!

Pain; see Grief and Affliction.

Bryant: Flood of Years.

All delights are vain: but that most vain, Which, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain.

Shakespeare: Love's Labor's Lost.

Sense of pleasure we may well

Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine,
But live content, which is the calmest life;
But pain is perfect misery, the worst

Of evils, and excessive, overturns

All patience.

Milton: Paradise Lost.

Again the play of pain

Shoots o'er his features, as the sudden gust
Crisps the reluctant lake, that lay so calm
Beneath the mountain shadow.

Byron.

Pain is no longer pain when it is past.

Margaret J. Preston: Sonnets.

A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain
To feel much anger.

George Eliot: Spanish Gypsy.

Parting; see Farewell, Exile, and Absence.
If I depart from thee, I cannot live;
And in thy sight to die, what were it else
But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?
To die by thee were but to die in jest;
From thee to die were torture more than death.
Shakespeare: 2 Henry VI.

Ev'n thus two friends condemn'd

Embrace and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,
Loather a hundred times to part than die.

Shakespeare: 2 Henry VI.

Stand not upon the order of your going,

But go at once.

So long

Shakespeare: Macbeth.

As he could make me with his eye or ear
Distinguish him from others, he did keep
The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief,
Still waving, as the fits and stirs of his mind