Sloth lay till mid-day, turning on his couch,
Like ponderous door upon its weary hinge.
Pollock's Course of Time.

Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floateth in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Here have I sat since morn, reading sometimes,
And sometimes listening to the faster fall
Of the large drops, or rising with the stir
Of an unbidden thought, have walk'd awhile,
With the slow step of indolence, my room,
And then sat down composedly again
To my quaint book of olden poetry.
It is a kind of idleness, I know;
And I am said to be an idle man-
And it is very true.

Willis's Poems.

There is no type of indolence like this:-
A ship in harbour, not a signal flying,
The waves unstirr'd, about her huge sides lying,
No breeze her drooping pennant-flag to kiss,
Or move the smallest rope that hangs aloft.
Park Benjamin.

Long has it been my fate to hear
The slave of mammon, with a sneer,

My indolence reprove;

Ah, little knows he of the care,
The toil, the hardship that I bear,
While lolling in my elbow-chair,

And seeming scarce to move.

Washington Allston.
Metninks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd
Beneath the vast out-stretching branches high
Of some old wood, in careless sort to lie,
Nor of the busier scenes we left behind
Aught envying.

IGNORANCE.

Charles Lamb.

Wita creeping, crooked pace forth came
An old, old man, with beard as white as snow,
That on a staff his feeble steps did frame,
And guide his weary gait both to and fro;
For his eyesight him failed long ago:

Both feet and face one way are wont to lead.
This was the ancient keeper of that place,
And foster-father of the giant dead;
His name Ignara, did his nature right aread.
Spenser's Fairy Queen *
'Tis naught but shows that ignorance esteems:
The thing possess'd, is not the thing it seems.
Daniel's Civil War.

Ignorance, that sometimes makes the hypocrite,
Wants never mischief; though it oft want fear:
For whilst we think faith made to answer wit,
Observe the justice that doth follow it.

Lord Brooke's Alaham.
Oh, to confess we know not what we should,
Is half excuse; we know not what we would.
Dr. Donne.

Heaven pities ignorance;
She's still the first that has her pardon sign'd;
All sins else see their faults, she's only blind.
Middleton's No Help like a Woman's.

Let ignorance with envy chat,

In spite of both, thou fame shalt win;
Whose map of learning seems like that
Which Joseph gave to Benjamin.

Herrick-to Ben Jonson

The truest characters of ignorance

Are vanity, and pride, and arrogance;

As blind men use to bear their noses higher
Than those that have their eyes and sight entire

Ignorance, when it hath purchas'd honour,
It cannot wield it.

Butler

Webster's Dutchess of Malfy.

But 't is some justice to ascribe to chance
The wrongs you must expect from ignorance:
None can the moulds of their creation choose,
We therefore should men's ignorance excuse,
When born too low, to reach at things sublime;
'Tis rather their misfortune than their crime.
Sir W. Davenant on the Earl of Orrery.

I, alas, was ignorant of thee,

As men have ever been of things most excellent;
Making such judgment of thy beauty, as
Astronomers on stars;

And on his arm a bunch of keys of ev'ry inner Believ'd that they were only made for show.

Who, when their better use they could not know,

door,

But he could not them use, but kept them still in

store.

But very uncouth sight was to behol
How he did fashion his untoward pace:

For as he forward mov d his footing old,

Do backward still was turn'd his wrinkled face:
Unlike to men, who ever as they trace,

ILLNESS-IMAGINATION.

My brain, methinks, is like an hour-glass,

Shaks. Julius Cæsar. Wherein m' imaginations run like sands,
Filling up time; but then are turn'd and turn'd:
So that I know not what to stay upon,

Fancy can save or kill; it hath clos'd up Wounds when the balsam could not, and without Bailey's Festus. The aid of salves: to think hath been a cure. For witchcraft then, that's all done by the force Of mere imagination.

It must be so; Plato, thou reasonest well:
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
"Tis the divinity that stirs within us;

Where are the charms and virtues which we dare 'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,

Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men?
The unreach'd paradise of our despair,
Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen,

And overpowers the page where it would bloom
again?

The soul, secure in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point:
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself

Who loves, raves-'tis youth's phrenzy-but the Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;

Imagination yields, fruits that unfit
The palate for the more substantial food
Of our own land-reality.

Percival.

Miss Landon.

Alas! we make

A ladder of our thoughts, where angels step,
But sleep ourselves at the foot.

Miss Landon.

'Mid earthly scenes forgotten or unknown,
Lives in ideal worlds, and wanders there alone.
Carlos Wilcox.

He is a God who wills it,-with a power
To work his purpose out in earth and air,
Though neither speak him fair!—

So may he pluck from earth its precious flower,
And in the ether choose a spirit rare,
To serve him deftly in some other sphere.

W. G. Simms.

But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,

The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.
Addison's Cato.

Look nature through: 't is revolution all;
All change; no death. Day follows night, and night
The dying day; stars rise, and set, and rise;
Earth takes th' example. See the summer gay,
With her green chaplet and ambrosial flowers,
Droops into pallid autumn: winter grey,
Horrid with frost, and turbulent with storm,
Blows autumn and his golden fruits away,
Then melts into the spring: soft spring, with breath
Favonian, from warm chambers of the south,
Recalls the first. All, to re-flourish, fades;
As in a wheel, all sinks, to reascend,
Emblems of man, who passes, not expires.
Young's Night Thoughts.

Can it be?

Matter immortal? and shall spirit die ?
Above the nobler, shall less nobler rise?
Shall man alone, for whom all else revives,
No resurrection know? Shall man alone,
Imperial man! be sown in barren ground,
Less privileg'd than grain, on which he feeds?
Young's Night Thoughts.
Still seems it strange, that thou should'st live for
ever?

Is it less strange, that thou should'st live at all?
This is a miracle; and that no more.

Young's Night Thoughts.
Possession, why more tasteless than pursuit?
Why is a wish far dearer than a crown?
That wish accomplish'd, why the grave of bliss?

Upon the poct's soul they flash for ever,
In evening shades these glimpses strange and Because in the great future buried deep,

swee

Iacy fill his heart betimes,-they leave him never,
And haunt his steps with sounds of falling feet.
W. G. Simms.

Beyond our plans of empire and renown,
Lies all that man with ardour should pursue;
And He who made him, bent him to the right.
Young's Night Thoughts.

IMPATIENCE-IMPRISONMENT.

There are distinctions that will live in heaven,

All pains, all tears, all time, all fears-and peals When time is a forgotten circumstance!

IMPUDENCE.

A single jail in Alfred's golden reign,
Could half the nation's criminals contain;
Fair justice then, without constraint ador'd,
Held high the steady scale, but sheath'd the sword;
No spies were paid, no special juries known;
Blest age! but ah! how different from our own!
Dr. Johnson's London,

As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sets of great ones, I only heard the reckless waters roar,
That ebb and flow by th' moon.