The parent love the wedded love includes,
The one permits the two their mutual moods,
The two each other know 'mid myriad multitudes.
S. Margaret Fuller.
Not for the summer-hour alone,
When skies resplendent shine,
And youth and pleasure fill the throne,
Our hearts and hands we twine;
But for those stern and wintry days
Of peril, pain, and fear,
When Heaven's wise discipline doth make
This earthly journey drear.
The joys of meeting pay the pangs of absence;
Else who could bear it?
Rowe's Tamerlane
Absence, with all its pains,
Is by this charming moment wip'd away.
Thomson's Agamemnon,
When lovers meet in adverse hour,
'Tis like a sun-glimpse through a shower,
A watery ray an instant seen,
Then darkly closing clouds between.
Scott's Rokeby
It is the hour when they
Mrs. Sigourney's Poems. Who love us are accustom'd to descend
Not for this span of life alone,
Which as a blast doth fly,
And like the transient flower of grass,
Just blossom, droop, and die;
But for a being without end,
This vow of love we take;
Grant us, oh God! one home at last,
For our Redeemer's sake.
Through the deep clouds o'er rocky Ararat!
How my heart beats!
Byron's Heaven and Earth,
And doth not a meeting like this make amends For all the long years I've been wand'ring away— To see thus around me my youth's early friends, As smiling and kind as in that happy day? Though haply o'er some of your brows as o'er mine, Mrs. Sigourney's Poems. The snow fall of time may be stealing—what then? Like Alps in the sunset, thus lighted by wine, We'll wear the gay tinge of youth's roses again.
A hundred thousand welcomes: I could weep,
And I could laugh; I am light, and heavy: wel-
A curse begin at very root of his heart,
That is not glad to see thee!
Shaks. Coriolanus.
As a long-parted mother with her child
Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting!
So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth,
And do thee favour with my royal hands.
There's not a fibre in my trembling frame
That does not vibrate when thy step draws near,.
There's not a pulse that throbs not, when I hear
Thy voice, thy breathing, nay thy very name.
Frances Kemble Butler
And must they meet first in a careless crowd?
This was a moment's grief.
Miss Landon.
The morning blush was lighted up by hope,-
Shaks. Richard II. The hope of meeting her.
Tell me, sweet lord, what is 't that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?
Why dost thou bend thy eyes upon the earth?
And start so often when thou sitt'st alone?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks,
And giv'n thy treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-ey'd musing, and curs'd melancholy?
Shaks. Henry IV. Part I.
Who ever yet could sound thy bottom? find
The ooze, to show what coast thy sluggish carrack
Might eas'liest harbour in?
I have neither the scholar's melancholy,
Which is emulation; nor the musician's,
Which is fantastical; nor the courtier's,
Which is pride; nor the soldier's, which is
Ambition; nor the lawyer's, which is politic;
Nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's,
Which is all these: but it is a melancholy
Of mine own; compounded of many simples,
Extracted from many objects, and, indeed,
The sundry contemplation of my travels;
In which my often rumination wraps me
In a most hum'rous sadness.
He comes! he comes! in every breeze the power
Of philosophic melancholy comes!
His near approach, the sudden starting tear,
The glowing cheek, the mild dejected air,
The softened feature, and the beating heart,
Pierced deep with many a virtuous pang, declare.
O'er all the soul his sacred influence breathes!
Inflames imagination; thro' the breast
Infuses every tenderness; and far
Beyond dim earth exalts the swelling thought.
Thomson's Seasons,
(I sing not to the vacant and the young,)
There is a kindly mood of melancholy,
That wings the soul, and points her to the skies.
Dyer's Ruins of Rome.
With eyes uprais'd, as one inspir'd,
Pale melancholy sat retir'd,
And from her wild sequester'd seat,
In notes by distance made more sweet,
Pour'd through the mellow horn her pensive soul.
Collins's Passions.
Responsive to the sprightly pipe, when all
In sprightly dance the village youth were join'd,
Edwin, of melody aye held in thrall,
From the rude gambol far remote reclin'd,
Shaks. As you like it. Sooth'd with the soft notes warbling in the wind:
Ah then, all jollity seem'd noise and folly
To the pure soul by fancy's fire refin'd!
Ah, what is mirth, but turbulence unholy,
When with the charm compared of heavenly
melancholy!
Beattie's Minstrel.
Though ending in distraction, should work
So far upon a man as to compel him
To court a thing that hath nor sense, nor being,
Is unto me a miracle.
Massinger's Duke of Milan.
Melancholy
Is not, as you conceive, an indisposition
Of body, but the mind's disease; so ecstasy,
Fantastic dotage, madness, frenzy, rapture,
Of mere imagination, differ partly
From melancholy; which is briefly this:
A mere commotion of the mind, o'ercharg'd
With fear and sorrow; first begat i' th' brain,
The seal of reason, and from thence, derived
As suddenly into the heart, the seat
Of our affection.
John Ford's Lover's Melancholy.
But hail, thou goddess, sage and holy,
Hail, divinest melancholy!
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight,
And therefore to our weaker view,
O'erlaid with black, staid wisdom's hue.
These pleasures, melancholy, give,
And I with thee will choose to live.
"T will soothe awhile the ache of years! The heart transfix'd-worn out with griefWill turn the arrow for relief.
Blame not, if oft in melancholy mood
This theme too far such fancy hath pursued,
And if the soul that with high hope should beat,
Turns to the gloomy grave's unblest retreat.
Robert Sands,
As the drain'd fountain, fill'd with autumn leaves,
The field swept naked of its garner'd sheaves;
So wastes at noon the promise of our dawn,
The springs all choking, and the harvest gone.
O. W. Holmes.
There is no music in this life
That sounds with happy laughter solely;
There's not a string attun'd to mirth,
But has its chord of melancholy./
We will revive those times, and in our memories
Preserve, and still keep fresh, like flowers in water,
Those happier days; when at our eyes our souls
Kindled their mutual fires, their equal beams
Shot and return'd, 'till link'd and twin'd in one,
They chain'd our hearts together.
Denham.
Come, flattering memory! and tell my heart
How kind she was, and with what pleasing art
She strove its fondest wishes to obtain,
Confirm her power, and faster bind my chain.
O remembrance!
Why dost thou open all my wounds again?
A confus'd report pass'd thro' my ears;
But full of hurry, like a morning dream,
It vanish'd in the bus'ness of the day.
Thinking will make me mad: why must I think,
When no thought brings me comfort?
Southern's Fatal Marriage.
Thought is damnation! 'Tis the plague of devils
To think on what they are!
Rowe's Ambitious Stepmother.
Perish the lover, whose imperfect flame
Forgets one feature of the nymph he loved.
Shenstone.
Ask the faithful youth
Why the cold urn of her, whom long he lov'd,
So often fills his arms; so often draws
His lonely footsteps at the silent hour
To pay the mournful tribute of his tears?
Oh! he will tell thee that the wealth of worlds
Should ne'er seduce his bosom to forego
That sacred hour when, stealing from the noise
Of care and envy, sweet remembrance soothes
With virtue's kindest looks his aching breast,
And turns his tears to rapture.
Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination.
O memory! thou fond deceiver,
Still importunate and vain,
To former joys recurring ever,
And turning all the past to pain;
Thou, like the world, th' opprest oppressing,
Thy smiles increase the wretch's woe!
Denham's Sophy. And he who wants each other blessing,
In thee must ever find a foe.
Ilad memory Deen lost with innocence,
We had not known the sentence, nor th' offence:
"Twas his chief punishment, to keep in store,
ne sad remembrance what he was before.
Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.
Goldsmith's Deserted Village.
Moore's Loves of the Angels.
On this dear jewel of my memory
My heart will ever dwell, and fate in vain
Possessing that, essay to make me wretched.
Lord John Russell's Don Carlos.
The intrepid Swiss, that guards a foreign shore,
Condemn'd to climb his mountain cliffs no more;
If chance he hears that song, so sweetly wild,
Which on those hills his infant hours beguiled;
Melts at the long-lost scenes, that round him rise,
And sinks a martyr to repentant sighs.
Rogers.
It haunts me still, though many a year has fled,
Like some wild melody.
Alas! the heedlessness of all around
Bespoke remembrance only too profound.
Joy's recollection is no longer joy,
While sorrow's memory is a sorrow still.
Byron's Doge of Venic
And thus, as in memory's bark we shall glide
To visit the scenes of our boyhood anew,
Though oft we may see, looking down on the tide,
The wreck of full many a hope shining through-
Yet still, as in fancy we point to the flowers,
That once made a garden of all the gay shore,
Deceiv'd for a moment, we'll think them still ours,
And breathe the fresh air of life's morning once
Anon.
Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain,
Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain;
Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise!
Each stamps its image as the other flies!
Rogers's Pleasures of Memory.
Rogers's Italy. Recall the traveller, whose alter'd form
But ever and anon of griefs subdued.
There comes a token like a scorpion's sting,
Scarce seen but with fresh bitterness imbued;
And slight withal may be the thinge which bring,
Back on the heart the weight which it could fling
Aside for ever: it may be a sound
A tone of music-summer's eve- or spring,
A flower- the wind-the ocean- which shall
Has borne the buffet of the mountain storm:
And who will first his fond impatience meet?
His faithful dog's already at his feet!
Rogers's Pleasures of Memory.
Sweet memory, wafted by the gentle gale,
Oft up the stream of time I turn my sail,
To view the fairy haunts of long-lost hours,
Blest with far greener shades, far lovelier flowers.
Rogers's Pleasures of Memory
Striking the electric chain wherewith we are Hail, memory, hail! in thy exhaustless mine,
And how and why we know not, nor can trace
Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind,
But feel the shock renew'd, nor can efface
The blight and blackening which it leaves behind,
Which out of things familiar, undesign'd,
When least we deem of such, calls up to view
The spectres whom no exorcism can bind,
The cold—the chang'd-perchance the dead
The mourn'd, the lov'd, the lost too many! yet
how few!
Byron's Childe Harold.
But in that instant, o'er his soul
Winters of memory seem'd to roll,
And gather in that drop of time
A life of pain, an age of crime.
O'er him who loves, or hates, or fears,
Such moment pours the grief of years.
Byron's Giaour.
From age to age unnumber'd treasures shine!
Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey,
And place and time are subject to thy sway!
Rogers's Pleasures of Memory.
That heart, methinks,
Were of strange mould, which kept no cherish'd
print
Of earlier, happier times, when life was fresh,
And love and innocence made holyday:
Or, that own'd
No transient sadness, when a dream, a glimpse
Of fancy touch'd past joys.
Memories on memories! to my soul again
There come such dreams vanish'd love and
That my wrung heart, though long inured to pain,
Sinks with the fulness of its wretchedness.
Some clerks no doubt in their deviceful art,
Whether this heavenly thing whereof I treat,
To weeten mercy, be of justice part,
Or drawn forth from her by divine entreat:
This well I wote, that sure she is as great,
And meriteth to have as high a place,
Sith in the Almighty's everlasting seat,
She first was bred and born of heavenly race,
From thence poured down on men by influence
of grace.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
The quality of mercy is not strain'd;
It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
Shaks. Merchant of Venice.
Earthly power doth then show likest gods,
When mercy seasons justice.
If he, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge as you do? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made!
Shaks. Mea. for Mea.
Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods?
Draw near them then in being merciful,
Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.
Shaks. Titus Andronicus.
If little faults proceeding on distemper,
Shall not be wink'd at, how shall we stretch our eye,
When capital crimes, chew'd, swallow'd, and
digested,
"T is well known, that whiles I was protector,
Pity was all the fault that was in me;
For I should melt at an offender's tears,
Shaks. Merchant of Venice. And lowly words were ransom for their fault.
Though justice be thy plea, consider this-
That in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
Shaks. Henry V. Part II.
Press not a falling man too far; 'tis virtue:
His faults lie open to the laws; let them,
Not you, correct him.
Shaks. Henry VIII.
Shaks. Merchant of Venice. The greatest attribute of heaven is mercy;
And 'tis the crown of justice, and the glory,
Where it may kill with right, to save with pity.
No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace,
As mercy does
Shaks. Mea. for Mea.
Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so;
Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.
Shaks. Mea. for Mea.
Beaumont and Fletcher's Lover's Progress.
Great minds erect their never-failing trophies
On the firm base of mercy; but to triumph
O'er a suppliant, by base fortune captiv'd,
Argues a bastard conquest.
Massinger's Emperor of the East.
O think! think upward on the thrones above:
Disdain not mercy, since they mercy love;
If mercy were not mingled with their pow'r,
This wretched world could not subsist an hour.
Sir W. Davenant's Siege of Rhodes.
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