Upon my conduct as a whole decide,
Such trifling errors let my virtues hide;
Fail I at meeting? am I sleepy there?
My purse refuse I with the priest to share?
Do I deny the poor a helping hand?
Or stop the wicked women in the strand?
Or drink at club beyond a certain pitch?
Which are your charges? conscience, tell me
which?
Crabbe.
And they believe him! oh! the lover may
Distrust that look which steals his soul away;-
The babe may cease to think that it can play
With heaven's rainbow:- alchymists may doubt
The shining gold their crucible gives out;
But faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last.
Moore's Lalla Rookh.
But thus it is, all sects, we see,
Have watchwords of morality;
Some cry out Venus, others Jove,
Here 't is religion, there 't is love!
I find the doctors and the sages Have differ'd in all climes and ages, And two in fifty scarce agree
On what is pure morality.
My altars are the mountains and the ocean, Earth, air, stars,-all that springs from the great whole,
Who hath produc'd, and will receive the soul.
Thou didst not leave me, oh my God!
Thou wert with those who bore the truth of old She plac'd it sad, with needless fear,
Into the deserts from the oppressor's rod,
And made the caverns of the rock their fold; And in the hidden chambers of the dead, Our guiding lamp, with fire immortal fed.
Mrs. Hemans's Poems.
Love never fails; though knowledge cease,
Though prophecies decay,
Love-Christian love, shall still increase,
Shall still extend her sway.
Lest time should shake my wavering soulUnconscious that her image there
Held every sense in fast control.
Whose souls have felt this one idolatry,
Can tell how precious is the slightest thing
Affection gives and hallows! A dead flower
Will long be kept, remembrancer of looks
That made each leaf a treasure.
Man hath a weary pilgrimage,
As through the world he wends; On every stage, from youth to age, Still discontent attends; With heaviness ne casts his eye Upon the road before, And still remembers with a sigh, The days that are no more.
Let us fill urns with rose-leaves in our May,
And hive the thrifty sweetness for December!
Bulwer's Poems.
Oh! these are the words that eternally utter
The spell that is seldom cast o'er us in vain;
With the wings and the wand of a fairy they
flutter,
And draw a charm'd circle about us again. We return to the spot where our infancy gamboll'd;
We linger once more in the haunts of our youth; We re-tread where young Passion first stealthily rambled,
And whispers are heard full of Nature and
In Flora's gay and blooming hour,
When every brake hath found its note,
And sunshine smiles in every flower;
But when the falling leaf is sere,
And withers sadly from the tree,
And o'er the ruins of the year
Cold autumn weeps, remember me.
Edward Everett.
Remember me-not, I entreat,
In scenes of festal week-day joy; For then it were not kind or meet Thy thoughts thy pleasures should alloy;
But on the sacred Sabbath day,
Anu, dearest, on thy bended knee, When thou for those thou lov'st dost pray, Sweet sister, then remember me.
I think of thee-I think of thee.
I think of thee, when, soft and wide,
The evening spreads her robes of light,
And, like a young and timid bride,
Sits blushing in the arms of night:
And when the moon's sweet crescent springs
In light o'er heaven's wide waveless sea,
And stars are forth, like blessed things,
I think of thee-I think of thee.
In ashes and sackcloth he did array
His dainty course, proud humours to abate;
And dieted with fasting every day,
The swellings of his wounds to mitigate;
And ever as superfluous flesh did rot,
And made him pray both early and eke late:
Amendment ready still at hand did wait
To pluck it out with pincers fiery hot,
That soon in him was left no one corrupted spot.
Spenser's Fairy Queen
Who by repentance is not satisfied,
Is nor of heaven, nor earth.
Shaks. Two Gentlemen of Verona.
If hearty sorrow
Be a sufficient ransom for offence,
I tender it here; I do as truly suffer,
As e'er I did commit.
Shaks. Two Gentlemen of Verona.
They say best men are moulded out of faults;
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad:-
:-so may my husband.
Shaks. Measure for Measure.
Never came reformation in a flood,
With such a heady current, scow'ring faults,
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness
So soon did lose his seat, and fall at once,
As in this king.
To mock the expectation of the world;
To frustrate prophecies; and to raze out
Rotten opinion, who hath writ me down
After my seeming.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part II
If he out-live the envy of this day,
England did never owe so sweet a hope,
So much misconstrued in his wantonness,
Shaks. Henry IV. Part 1.
Yet time serves, wherein you may redeem
Your banish'd honours, and restore yourselves
Into the good thoughts of the world again.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part I.
To tell you what I since my conversion
So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.
Man should do nothing that he should repent;
But if he have, and say that he is sorry;
It is a worse fault, if he be not truly.
We end our pilgrimage, 't is fit that we
Should leave corruption, and foul sin, behind us.
But with wash'd feet and hands, the heathens dar'd
Enter their profane temples; and for me
To hope my passage to eternity
Can be made easy, till I have shook off
Shaks. As you like it. The burthen of my sins in free confession,
Aided with sorrow, and repentance for them,
Is against reason.
The prince will, in the perfectness of time,
Cast off his followers: and their memory
Shall as a pattern or a measure live,
By which his grace must mete the life of others;
Turning past evils to advantage.
Massinger's Emperor of the East.
Sorrow for past ills, doth restore frail man
To his first innocence.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part II. T is not, to cry God mercy, or to sit
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots, -
Till then I banish thee.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part II.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest;
Presume not, that I am the thing I was:
For heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part II.
Like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly, and attract more eyes,
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part I.
What is done cannot be now amended:
Men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes,
Which after hours give leisure to repent.
And droop, or to confess that thou hast fail'd:
'Tis to bewail the sins thou didst commit;
And not commit those sins thou hast bewail'd.
He that bewails and not forsakes them too;
Confesses rather what he means to do.
As carnal scamen in a storm
Turn pious converts and reform.
Butler's Hudibras
Habitual evils change not on a sudden,
But many days must pass, and many sorrows;
Conscious remorse, and anguish must be felt,
Shaks. Richard III. To curb desire, to break the stubborn will,
And work a second nature in the soul,
Ere virtue can resume the place she lost.
Rowe's Ulysses
The drunkard, after all his lavish cups,
Is dry, and then is sober; so at length,
When you awake from this lascivious dream,
Repentance then will follow, like the sting
Plac'd in the adder's tail.
Come, fair repentance, daughter of the skies!
Soft harbinger of soon returning virtue!
Webster's White Devil. The weeping messenger of grace from heav'n!
Heaven and angels
Brown's Athelstan
Take great delight in a converted sinner:
Why should you then, a servant and professor,
Differ so much from them? if every woman,
That commits evil, should be therefore kept
Back in desires of goodness, how should virtue
Be known and honour'd?
Middleton's Women beware Women.
So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like scorpion girt by fire;
So writhes the mind remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoom'd for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath.
Around it flame, within it death.
A change in Peter's life ye must not hope:
'To try to wash an ass's face,
Is really labour to misplace;
And really loss of time as well as soap.
Dr. Wolcott's Peter Pindar.
High minds of native pride and force, -
Most deeply feel thy pangs, remorse!
Fear for their scourge mean villains have;
Thou art the torturer of the brave.
Some who offend from a suspicious nature,
Will afterward such fair confession make
As turns e'en the offence into a favour.
Joanna Baillie's De Montford.
Priest, spare thy words; I add not to my sins
That of presumption, in pretending now
To offer up to heaven the forc'd repentance
Of some short moments for a life of crimes.
Joanna Baillie's Orra.
Repentance often finds too late,
To wound us is to harden;
And Love is on the verge of Hate,
Each time it stoops for pardon.
I did but chide in jest, the best loves use it
Sometimes, it sets an edge upon affection.
When we invite our best friends to a feast,
"T is not all sweet-meats that we set before them;
There's somewhat sharp and salt, both to whet
appetite,
And make them taste their wine well: So methinks,
After a friendly, sharp, and savoury chiding,
A kiss tastes wondrous well, and full o' the grape.
Middleton's Women beware Women.
Do not with too severe
A harshness chide the error of his love;
Lest like a crystal stream, which unoppos'd,
Runs with a smooth brow gently in its course,
Being stopp'd o' th' sudden, his calm nature riots
Into a wilful fury, and persists
In his intended fancy!
Clapthorne's Albertus Wallenstein.
Reprove not in his wrath incensed man;
Good counsel comes clean out of season then:
But when his fury is appeas'd, and pass'd,
He will conceive his fault, and mend at last.
Randolph
I will not let thee sleep, nor eat, nor drink;
But I will ring thee such a piece of chiding,
That thunder with less violence cleaves the air:
The mockery of the hollow shrine at which my Thou shalt confess the troubled sea more calm; spirit knelt. Mine is the requiem of years in reckless folly The ravens, screech-owls, and the mandrake's pass'd,
The wail above departed hopes on a frail venture Shall be thy constant music.
Randolph's Jealous Lovers. Thou discord in this choral harmony! That dost profane the loveliest light and air God ever gave: be still, and look, and listen! Mrs. Osgood's Poems. How dare you bring your inharmonious heart To such a scene? How dare you let your voice Talk out of tune so with the voice of God In earth and sky?
Mrs. Osgood's PoemsTake back your cold, inane, and carping mind Into the world you came from and belong toThe world of common cares and sordid aims. Mrs. Osgood's Poems.
Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy feet;
My life thou shalt command, but not my shame;
The one my duty owes; but my fair name,
(Despite of death, that lives upon my grave)
To dark dishonour's use thou shalt not have.
Shaks. Richard II.
The purest treasure mortal times afford,
Is spotless reputation; that away,
Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay.
Hang out our banners; on the outward walls The cry is still, they come: our castle's strength Will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lic, Shaks. Richard II. Till famine, and the ague, eat them up:
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Be great in act, as you have been in thought:
Let not the world see fear, and sad distrust
Govern the motion of a kingly eye:
Be stirring as the time: be fire with fire;
Threaten the threat'ner, and outface the brow
Of bragging horror: so shall inferior eyes,
That borrow their behaviour from the great,
Grow great by your example; and put on
The dauntless spirit of resolution.
Away, and glister like the god of war,
When he intendeth to become the field;
Show boldness and aspiring confidence.
What! shall they seek the lion in his den,
And fright him there? and make him tremble
there?
O, let it not be said! forage, and run
To meet displeasure further from the doors;
And grapple with him, ere he come too nigh.
Shaks. King John.
Let them pull all about mine ears; present me
Death on the wheel, or at wild horses' heels;
Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock,
That the precipitation might down stretch
Below the beam of sight, yet will I still
Be thus to them.
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