The noisy praise

Of giddy crowds is changeable as winds;
Still vehement, and still without a cause;
Servant to change, and blowing in the tide
Of swoln success; but veering with the ebb,
It leaves the channel dry.

Argument.

He that complies against his will,
Is of his own opinion still.

Dryden.

Butler: Hudibras.

In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill,

For e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still; While words of learned length and thundering sound

Amaz'd the gazing rustics rang'd around;

And still they gaz'd, and still the wonder grew
That one small head could carry all he knew.
Goldsmith: Deserted Village.

Be calm in arguing: for fierceness makes
Error a fault, and truth discourtesy.

Herbert: Temple.

Like doctors thus, when much dispute has past,
We find our tenets just the same at last.

Pope: Moral Essays.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree,
And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me.
Pope: Moral Essays.

Art, Artist.

The passive Master lent his hand

To the vast soul that o'er him planned.

Emerson.

In framing an artist, art hath thus decreed,
To make some good, but others to exceed.
Shakespeare: Pericles.

Around the mighty master came
The marvels which his pencil wrought,
Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human thought.

Whittier: Raphael.

The hand that rounded Peter's dome,

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew;-
The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Emerson: The Problem.

Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother's face,

Her aspect and her attitude.
He is the greatest artist, then,
Whether of pencil or of pen,

Who follows Nature. Never man,
As artist or as artisan,

Pursuing his own fantasies,

Can touch the human heart, or please,
Or satisfy our nobler needs.

Aspiration.

Longfellow: Kéramos.

Into our hearts high yearnings
Come welling and surging in,-
Come from the mystic ocean,
Whose rim no foot has trod,-

Some of us call it longing,

And others call it God.

William Herbert Carruth.

There where turbid waters fall apart

From hidden depths of tangled ooze and mire, The tall white lily lifts its golden heart,

-Soul, shalt not thou aspire?

Mary Elizabeth Blake.

Reign, and keep life in this our deep desire

Our only greatness is that we aspire.

Jean Ingelow: A Snow Mountain.

A noble aspiration is a deed

Though unachieved.

John Kendrick Bangs.

What I aspired to be,

And was not, comforts me:

A brute I might have been, but would not sink i'

the scale.

Browning: Rabbi Ben Ezra.

Authorship, Authors; see Books and Poetry.
At Learning's fountain it is sweet to drink,
But 'tis a nobler privilege to think;
And oft, from books apart, the thirsting mind
May make the nectar which it cannot find.
'Tis well to borrow from the good and great;
'Tis wise to learn; 'tis god-like to create!

J. G. Saxe: The Library.

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
And pause awhile from letters to be wise,

There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail;
See nations slowly wise, and meanly just,
To buried merit raise the tardy bust.

Dr. Johnson: Vanity of Human Wishes.

In every work regard the writer's end,
Since none can compass more than they intend.

Pope: Essay on Criticism.

An author! 'tis a venerable name!

How few deserve it, and what numbers claim!

Young: Epistle to Pope.

None but an author knows an author's cares,
Or Fancy's fondness for the child she bears.

Cowper: Progress of Error.

Holmes: Height of Ridiculous.

Longfellow: Voices of the Night.

Look, then, into thine heart, and write!

Autumn.

How bravely Autumn paints upon the sky
The gorgeous fame of Summer which is fled!

Thomas Hood.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves

run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core.

Keats: To Autumn.

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.

Bryant: Death of the Flowers.

Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and

crimson.

Bryant: Third of November.

The great sun

Looked with the eye of love through the golden vapors around him;

While arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow,

Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the forest

Flashed like the plane-tree the Persian adorned with mantles and jewels.

Avarice, Covetousness, Greed.

Longfellow: Evangeline.

The base miser starves amidst his store,

Broods o'er his gold, and griping still at more,
Sits sadly pining, and believes he's poor.

The love of gold, that meanest rage,

Dryden.

And latest folly of man's sinking age,
Which, rarely venturing in the van of life,
While nobler passions wage their heated strife,