I take of worthy men whate'er they give:
Their heart I gladly take, if not, their hand;
If that too is withheld, a courteous word,
Or the civility of placid looks.
Joanna Baillie's De Montford
He who will not give
Some portion of his ease, his blood, his wealth,
For others' good, is a poor frozen churl.
Joanna Baillie's Ethwald.
Unequal fortune
Made him my debtor for some courtesies,
Which bind the good more firmly.
Byron's Doge of Venice.
What is friendship? - do not trust her,
Nor the vows which she has made;
Diamonds dart their brightest lustre
From a palsy-shaken head.
To soothe affliction in her darkest hour.
Friend after friend departs;
Who hath not lost a friend?
There is no union here of hearts
That hath not here its end.
Thy voice prevails; dear friend, my gentle friend!
This long-shut heart for thee shall be unseal'd,
And though thy soft eye mournfully will bend
Over the troubled stream, yet once reveal'd
Shall its freed waters flow.
Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul,
Follow thy friend belov'd!
But in the lonely hour,
But in the evening walk,
Think that he companies thy solitude!
With a declining taste for making friends,
One's taste for the fatigue of pleasure's past.
Knit to him
The hearts he opens like a clasped book.
The friend smoothing down the lonely
And what is friendship but a name,
A charm, that lulls to sleep;
A shade that follows wealth or fame,
And leaves the wretch to weep.
What spectre can the charnel send,
So dreadful as an injur'd friend?
Scott's Rokeby.
Friendship is no plant of hasty growth;
Tho' planted in esteem's deep fixed soil,
The gradual culture of kind intercourse
Must bring it to perfection.
Joanna Baillie's De Montford.
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And does kind deeds, which any one can do
Who has a feeling spirit,—such a friend
Heals with a searching balsam.
Oh! let my friendship in the wreath,
Though but a bud among the flowers,
Its sweetest fragrance round thee breathe-
'T will serve to soothe thy weary hours.
Mrs Welln
Beyond is all abyss,
Eternity, whose end no eye can reach.
Milton's Paradise Lost
Eternity, that puzzles all the world
To name the inhabitants that people it;
Eternity, whose undiscover'd country
We fools divide before we come to see it,
Making one part contain all happiness,
The other misery, then unseen fight for it:
All sects pretending to a right of choice,
Gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter and fuller Yet none go willingly to take a part.
And when the most obdurate swear they do not,
Their trembling hearts belie their boasting tongues.
Divines but peep on undiscover'd worlds,
And draw the distant landscape as they please;
But who has e'er return'd from those bright regions,
To tell their manners, and relate their laws?
Dryden's Don Sebastian.
Now he'll outstare the lightning. To be furious
Is to be frighted out of fear; and in that mood
The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still
A diminution in our captain's brain
Eternity, thou pleasing- dreadful thought!
Restores his heart: when valour preys on reason, Thro' what variety of untry'd beings,
It eats the sword it fights with.
Thro' what new scenes and changes must we pass?
Shaks. Antony and Cleopatra. The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me;
But shadows, clouds, and aarkness rest upon it.
Addison's Cato.
FUTURITY.
O, that a man might know
The end of this day's business, ere it come!
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known.
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits
know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
O heaven! that one might read the book of fate, The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Had he thy reason would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly given,
Shaks. Henry IV. Part II. That cach may fill the circle mark'd by heaven:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Pope's Essay on Man
the happiest youth-viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue —
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.
Shaks Henry IV. Part. II.
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor❜d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold;
To be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Pope's Essay on Man.
See dying vegetables life sustain,
See life dissolving vegetate again;
All forms that perish other forms supply,
By turns we catch the vital breath and die;
Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne,
They risc, they break, and to that sea return.
Nothing is foreign; parts relate to whole;
One all-extending, all-preserving soul
Connects each being, greatest with the least;
Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast;
All serv'd, all serving; nothing stands alone;
The chain holds on, and where it ends unknown.
Pope's Essay on Man.
Eternity, thou awful gulf of time,
This wide creation on thy surface floats.
Of life-of death-what is- or what shall be,
I nothing know. The world is all a dream,
The consciousness of something that exists,
Then what am I?
Yet is not what it seems.
Death must unfold the mystery!
Dowe's Sethona.
What avails it that indulgent heaven
From mortal eyes has wrapt the wocs to come,
If we, ingenious to torment ourselves,
Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own?
Enjoy the present; nor with needless cares
Of what may spring from blind misfortune's womb,
Appal the shortest hour that life bestows.
Serene, and master of yourself, prepare
For what may come; and leave the rest to heaven.
Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health.
Answer me, burning stars of night!
Where is the spirit gone?
That past the reach of human sight,
As a swift breeze hath flown?
And the stars answer'd me-" we roll
In light and power on high,
But of the never-dying soul,
Ask that which cannot die."
Shall I be left forgotten in the dust,
When fate, relenting, lets the flower revive?
Shall nature's voice, to man alone unjust,
Bid him, though doom'd to perish, hope to live?
Is it for this fair virtue oft must strive
With disappointment, penury, and pain?
No: heaven's immortal springs shall yet arrive,
And man's majestic beauty bloom again,
Bright through th' eternal year of love's trium
Beattie's Minstrel
phant reign.
We shape ourselves the joy or fear
Of which the coming life is made,
And fill our Future's atmosphere
With sunshine or with shade.
Whittier's Poems
There is no hope-the Future will but turn
The old sands in the failing glass of Time!
R. H. Stoddard.
Hush, pretty boy, thy hopes might have been better.
"T is lost at dice, what ancient honour won;
Hard when the father plays away the son!
Shaks. Yorkshire Tragedy,
If yet thou love game at so dear a rate,
Learn this, that hath old gamesters dearly cost;
Dost lose? Rise up; Dost win? Rise in that state.
Who strive to sit out losing hands are lost.
GENEROSITY-GENIUS-GENTLEMAN.
Oh, the dear pleasures of the velvet plain,
The painted tablets, dealt and dealt again!
Cowper's Progress of Error.
Sinall black-legg'd sheep devour with hunger
The meagre herbage, fleshless, lank and lean;
Such, o'er thy level turf, Newmarket! stray,
And there, with other black-legs, find their prey.
Crabbe.
And, being enfranchis'd, bid him come to me:
"Tis not enough to help the feeble up,
But to support him after.
O born of heaven, thou child of magic song!
What pangs, what cutting hardships wait on thee,
When thou art doom'd to cramping poverty;
The pois'nous shafts from defamation's tongue,-
The jeers and tauntings of the blockhead throng,
Who joy to see thy bold exertions fail;
While hunger, pinching as December's gale,
Brings moody dark despondency along.
And should'st thou strive fame's lofty mount to
scale,
The steps of its ascent are cut in sand;
And half-way up,-a snake-scourge in her hand,
Lurks pallid envy, ready to assail:
And last, if thou the top, expiring gain,
When fame applauds, thou hearest not the strain.
Robert Millhouse to Genius.
One science only will one genius fit,
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
O, my good lord, the world is but a word;
Were it all yours, to give it in a breath,
How quickly were it gone!
Whose breast, too narrow for her heart, was still
Her reason's throne, and prison to her will.
Sir W. Davenant.
Pope's Essay on Criticism.
Talents angel-bright,
If wanting worth, are shining instruments,
In false ambition's hand, to finish faults
Illustrious, and give infancy renown.
Young's Night Thoughts.
Thou can'st not reach the light that I shall find; Genius, the Pythian of the Beautiful,
A gen'rous soul is sunshine to the mind.
Sir Robert Howard.
They that do
An act that does deserve requital,
Pay first themselves the stock of such content.
Sir Robert Howard.
God blesses still the generous thought,
And still the fitting word He speeds,
And truth, at His requiring taught,
He quickens into deeds.
Whittier's Poems. His was the gifted eye, which grace still touch'd
As if with second nature; and his dreams,
His childish dreams, were lit by hues of heaven-
Those which make Genius.
Time, place, and action, may with pains be
But genius must be born, and never can be taught.
Dryden.
They say that he has genius. I but see
That he gets wisdom as the flower gets hue,
While others hive it like the toiling bee;
That with him all things beautiful keep new.
Willis's Poems.
Genius! thou gift of Heaven! thou light divine!
Amid what dangers art thou doom'd to shine!
Oft will the body's weakness check thy force,
Oft damp tuy vigour, and impede thy course;
And trembling nerves compel thee to restrain
Thy noble efforts, to contend with pain;
Or want (sad guest!) will in thy presence come,
And breathe around her melancholy gloom;
Io life's low cares will thy proud thought confine,
And make her sufferings-her impatience-thine. Except you make, or hold it.
Crabbe.
Nor stand so much on your gentility,
Which is an airy, and mere borrow'd thing,
From dead men's dust and bones; and none of
yours,
If they but own full tithe of gold and wear a To cast thee up again?
The parchment scroll of titled line, the riband at
Can still suffice to ratify and grant a high degree!
Eliza Cook's Poems.
But nature, with a matchless hand, sends forth
her nobly born,
And laughs the paltry attributes of wealth and
rank to scorn;
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature,
So horridly to shake our disposition,
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Shaks. Hamlet
I am thy father's spirit;
She moulds with care a spirit rare, half human, Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night half divine, And, for the day, confin'd to fast in fires,
And cries, exulting, "Who can make a gentle. Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, Are burnt and purg'd away
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