GRIEF decreases when it can swell no higher. Heart-consuming Grief. YET still he wasted as the snow congeal'd When the bright sunne his beams thereon did beat. WHEN sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions. SHAKSPEARE. O SORROW! Why dost borrow The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?— To the white rose bushes? Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips? O sorrow! Why dost borrow The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye ?— Or, on a moonless night, To tinge, on syren shores, the salt sea-spray? Why dost borrow The mellow ditties from a mourning tongue ?- Unto the nightingale, Beneath the palm-trees, by the river side, There was no one to ask me why I wept- Brimming the water-lily cups with tears, * Young Stranger! I've been a ranger In search of pleasure throughout every clime; Bewitch'd I sure must be, To lose in grieving all my maiden prime. Come then, sorrow, Sweetest sorrow! Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast: And deceive thee, But now of all the world I love thee best. There is not one, No no, not one But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid; And her brother, Her playmate, and her wooer in the shade. KEATS. Endymion, Book IV. WEEP no more, nor sigh, nor groan, Violets pluck'd, the sweetest rain BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. VENICE. IN Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, Those days are gone, but Beauty still is here. The reyel of the earth, the masque of Italy! Childe Harold, Canto IV. On the Extinction of the Republic. ONCE did She hold the gorgeous East in fee, She was a maiden city, bright and free; And what if she had seen those glories fade, RIVER. THE current, that with gentle murmur glides, Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage; He makes sweet music with th' enamel'd stones, He overtaketh in his pilgrimage: And so by many winding nooks he strays, With willing sport to the wild ocean. Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II. THIS river does not see the naked sky I had been used to pass my weary eves; KEATS. Endymion, Book I. PROVIDENCE. OUR indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us, Rough-hew them how we will. Hamlet, Act V. YET cease the ways of Providence to blame * PRIOR. Odes. PERVERSE mankind! whose wills, created free, POPE. Odyssey, Book I. IMAGINATION. Theseus. MORE strange than true. I never may believe Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping phantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: * In ev'ry way, in ev'ry sense, Dr. Syntax's Tour, Canto VIII. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Such tricks hath strong imagination; Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V. FANCY. EVER let the Fancy roam, At a touch sweet pleasure melteth.† Then let winged Fancy wander Through the thought still spread beyond her: She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar. O sweet Fancy! let her loose; ** Sit thee by the ingle, when The sear faggot blazes bright, * Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or wainscot, can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied. + But pleasures are like poppies spread, A moment white,-then melts for ever; That flit e'er you can point their place; SWIFT. BURNS. Tam O'Shanter. |