Byron's Corsair. dangerously dear – In woman's eye th' unanswerable tear! That weapon of her weakness she can wield, To save, subdue—at once her spear and shield; Avoid it-virtue ebbs and wisdom errs, Too fondly gazing on that grief of hers! What lost a world, and made a hero fly? The timid tear in Cleopatra's eye. Yet be the soft triumvir's fault forgiven, By this--how many lose not earth-but heaven! Consign their souls to man's eternal foc, And seal their own to spare a wanton's woe! Byron's Corsair.
The tears rush'd forth from her unclouded brain, Like mountain mists, at length dissolv'd in rain.
I wish'd but for a single tear,
As something welcome, new, and dear,
I wish'd it then, I wish it still,
Despair is stronger than my will.
Hide thy tears
I do not bid thee not to shed them- 't were
Easier to stop Euphrates at its source
Than one tear of a true and tender heart-
But let me not behold them; they unman me.
Byron's Sardanapalus.
The tear that is shed, though in secret it roll,
Shall long keep his memory green in my soul.
Moore.
Thank God, bless God, all ye who suffer not
More grief than ye can weep for.
Miss Barrett.
Tears! what are tears? The babe weeps in his
cot,
The mother singing; at her marriage bell,
The bride weeps: and before the oracle
Of high-fam'd hills, the poet hath forgot
The moisture on his cheeks.
Sudden they see from midst of all the main
The surging waters like a mountain rise,
And the great sca, puff'd up with proud disdain,
To swell above the measure of his guise,
As threat'ning to devour all that his power despise.
Spenser's Fairy Queen
The tyranny of th' open night's too rough
For nature to endure.
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have riv'd the knotty oaks; and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell, rage, and foam,
To be exalted with the threat'ning clouds;
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Shaks. Julius Cæsar
Doth play the trumpet to his purposes;
And, by his hollow whistling in the leaves,
Foretels a tempest, and a blustering day
Shaks, Henry IV. Part 1,
This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear wou.n
The lion, and the belly-pinched wolf Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs, And bids what will, take all.
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That hast within thee undivulged crimes,
Unwhipt of justice! Hide thee, thou bloody hand,
Thou perjur'd, and thou simular man of virtue,
That art incestuous! Caitiff, to pieces shake,
That under covert and convenient seeming,
Hast practis'd on man's life! Close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace.
Shaks. King Lear.
Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the
cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunder-bolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking
thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once,
That make ungrateful man.
Shaks. King Lear.
I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness,
I never gave you kingdoms, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription; why then let fall
Your horrible displeasure; here I stand, your
slave,
A poor, infirm, weak and despis'd old man.
Shaks. King Lear. Alas, sir! are you here? things that love night, Love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies Gallow the very wand'rers of the dark,
Or to the earth's dark basis underneath,
Are to the main as inconsiderable,
And harmless, if not wholesome, as a sneeze
To man's less universe, and soon are gone.
Milton's Paradise Regained
Call you these peals of thunder but the yawn
Of bellowing clouds? by Jove, they seem to me
The world's last groans! and these vast sheets
of flame
Are its last blaze! the tapers of the gods,
The sun and moon, run down like waxen globes,
And chaos is at hand.
Lee's Edipus.
The gathering clouds like meeting armies
Come on apace.
'Tis well, said Jove, and for consent,
Thundering he shook the firmament.
Look, from the turbid south
What floods of flame in red diffusion burst,
Frequent and furious, darted thro' the dark
And broken ridges of a thousand clouds,
Pil'd hill on hill; and hark, the thunder rous'd,
Groans in long roarings through the distant gloom.
Mallet's Mustapha.
'Tis listening fear and dumb amazement all:
When to the startled eye the sudden glance
Appears far south, eruptive thro' the cloud;
And following slower, in explosion vast,
The thunder raises his tremendous voice.
Thomson's Seasons.
From cloud to cloud the rending lightnings rage;
Till, in the furious elemental war
Dissolv'd, the whole precipitated mass
And make them keep their caves: since I was Unbroken floods and solid torrents pour.
Then issues forth the storm with sudden burst,
And hurls the whole precipitated air,
Down, in a torrent. On the passive main
Descends the ethereal force, and with strong gust
Turns from its bottom the discolour'd deep.
Thro' the black night that sits immense around,
Lash'd into foam, the fierce contending brine
Seems o'er a thousand raging waves to burn.
Thomson's Seasons.
Along the woods, along the moorish fens,
Sighs the sad genius of the coming storm;
And up among the loose disjointed cliffs,
And fractur'd mountains wild, the brawling brook
And cave, presageful, send a hollow moan,
Resounding long in listening fancy's ear.
Thro' all the burden'd air,
Long groans are heard, shrill sounds and distant
sighs,
That, utter'd by the demon of the night,
Warn the devoted wretch of woe and death.
Thomson's Seasons.
In vain for him the officious wife prepares
The fire fair blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense;
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows, a stiffen'd corse,
Stretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern blast.
Thomson's Seasons.
Oh! when the growling winds contend, and all
The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm;
To sink in warm repose, and hear the din
Howl o'er the steady battlements, delights
Above the luxury of vulgar sleep.
Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health.
Peace, peace-thou rash and unadvised man
Oh! add not to this night of nature's horrors
The darker shadowing of thy wicked fears.
The hand of heaven, not man, is dealing with us,
And thoughts like thine do make it deal thus
sternly.
Maturin's Bertram.
The strife of fiends is on the battling clouds,
The glare of hell is in these sulphurous lightnings;
This is no earthly storm.
Maturin's Bertram.
Of winds and waves, the strangely mingled sounds
Ride heavily; the night-winds hollow sweep,
Mocking the sounds of human lamentation.
Maturin's Bertram.
Monk. How hast thou fared in this most awful
time?
Prior.-As one whom fear did not make pitiless:
I bow'd me at the cross for those whose heads
Are naked to the visiting blasts of heav'n
In this its hour of wrath.-
For the lone traveller on the hill of storms,
For the toss'd shipman on the perilous deep;
Till the last peal that thunder'd o'er mine head
Did force a cry of- mercy for myself.
Maturin's Bertram.
Storms, when I was young,
Would still pass o'er like nature's fitful fevers,
And render'd all more wholesome. Now their
rage,
Sent thus unseasonably and profitless,
Speaks like the threats of heaven.
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He comes! dread Brama shakes the sunless sky
With murmuring wrath, and thunders from on
high!
Heaven's fiery horse, beneath his warrior form,
Paws the light clouds, and gallops on the storm!
Wide waves his flickering sword, his bright arms
glow
Like summer suns, and light the world below!
Earth, and her trembling isles in ocean's bed,
Are shook; and nature rocks beneath his tread!
Campbell's Pleasures of Hope
'Tis pleasant by the cheerful hearth to hear
Of tempests, and the dangers of the deep,
And pause at times and feel that we are safe;
Then listen to the perilous tale again,
And with an eager and suspended soul
Woo terror to delight us; but to hear
The roaring of the raging elements,
To know all human skill, all human strength,
Avail not; to look round, and only see
The mountain wave incumbent with its weigh
Of bursting waters o'er the reeling bark,→
O God! this is indeed a dreadful thing!
The sky is changed! and such a change! oh night,
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among
Leaps the live thunder! not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!
And this is in the night:— Most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,—
A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
And the big rain comes dancing on the earth!
And now again 't is black,—and now, the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's
Byron's Childe Harold.
Is overcast, and musters muttering thunder,
In clouds that seem approaching fast, and show
In forked flashes a commanding tempest.
Byron's Sardanapalus.
Hark, hark! deep sounds, and deeper still,
Are howling from the mountain's bosom :
There's not a breath of wind upon the hill,
Yet quivers every leaf, and drops each blossom:
Earth groans as if beneath a heavy load.
Byron's Heaven and Earth.
The billows are leaping around it,
The bark is weak and frail,
The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it
Darkly strew the gale.
I stood where the deepening tempest pass'd,
The strong trees groan'd in the sounding blast,
The murmuring deep-with its wrecks roll'd on;
The clouds o'ershadow'd the mighty sun;
The low reeds bent by the streamlet's side,
And hills to the thunder-peal replied;
The lightning burst on its fearful way,
While the heavens were lit in its red array.
Willis Gaylord Clark.
The night came down in terror. Through the air
Mountains of clouds, with lurid summits roll'd;
The lightning kindling with its vivid glare
Their outlines, as they rose, heap'd fold on fold,
The wind, in fitful sighs, swept o'er the sea;
And then a sudden lull, gentle as sleep,
Soft as an infant's breathing, seem'd to be
Lain, like enchantment, on the throbbing deep,
But false the calm! for soon the strengthen'd gale
Burst in one loud explosion, far and wide,
Growning the thunder's voice!
With riotous banquets, sicknesses came in,
When death 'gan muster all his dismal band
Of pale diseases.
May's Old Couple
From our tables here, no painful surfeits,
No fed diseases grow, to strangle nature,
And suffocate the active brain; no fevers,
No apoplexies, palsies or catarrhs
Are here; where nature, not entic'd at all
With such a dang'rous bait as pleasant cates,
Takes in no more than she can govern well.
May's Old Couple.
He, who the rules of temperance neglects,
From a good cause may produce vile effects.
Tuke's Adventures of Five Hours
The rule of not too much,- by temperance taught
In what thou eat'st and drink'st, seeking from thence
Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight,
'Till many years over thy head return:
So may's thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop,
Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease
Gather'd, not harshly pluck'd; in death mature
O madness, to think use of strongest wines
And strongest drinks our chief support of health;
When God, with these forbidden, made choice to
His mighty champion, strong above compare, Whose drink was only from the liquid brook, Milton's Samson Agonistes.
If men will shun swoln fortune's ruinous blasts,
Let them use temperance: nothing violent lasts.
W. Strachey.
Fatal effects of luxury and ease!
We drink our poison, and we eat disease,
Indulge our senses at our reason's cost,
Till sense is pain, and reason hurt or lost.
But all in vain: no fort can be so strong,
No fleshly breast can armed be so sound,
But will at last be won with battery long,
Or unawares at disadvantage found:
Nothing is sure that grows on earthly ground:
And who most trusts in arm of fleshly might,
Not so, O temperance bland! when rul'd by And boasts in beauty's chain not to be bound,
To mix the food by vicious rules of art,
To kill the stomach and to sink the heart,
To make mankind to social virtue sour,
Cram o'er each dish, and be what they devour;
For this the kitchen muse first fram'd her book,
Commanding sweat to steam from ev'ry cook;
Children no more their antic gambols tried,
And friends to physic wonder'd why they died.
Not so the Yanke; his abundant feast,
With simples furnish'd, and with plainness dress'd,
A numerous offspring gathers round his board,
And cheers alike the servant and the lord;
Whose well-bought hunger prompts the joyous
And health attends them from the short repast.
Joel Barlow.
Temperate in every place,-abroad, at home,
Thence will applause, and hence will profit come;
And health from either he in time prepares
For sickness, age, and their attendant cares.
Crabbe. The Borough.
Beware the bowl! though rich and bright
Its rubies flash upon the sight,
An adder coils its depths beneath,
Whose lure is woe, whose sting is death.
Doth soonest fall in disadventurous fight,
And yields his caitiff neck to victor's most despight.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
What do I love her,
That I desire to speak to her again?
And feast upon her eyes? what is 't I dream on
O cunning enemy, that to catch a saint,
With saints dost beit thy hook! most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin, in loving virtue.
Look upon the very mother of mischief, Who as her daughters ripen, and do bud
Their youthful spring, straight she instructs them how
To set a gloss on beauty, add a lustre
To the defect of nature; how to use
The mystery of painting, curling, powd'ring, And with strange periwigs, pin-knots, borderings To deck them up like a winter's bush,
For men to gaze at on a midsummer night. Swetnam the Woman-Hater
And these once learn'd, what wants the tempte now,
To snare the stoutest champion of men?
Swetnam the Woman-Hater.
What a frail thing is man! it is not worth
Our glory to be chaste, while we deny
Mirth and converse with women: He is good,
That dares the tempter, yet corrects his blood.
Shirley's Lady of Pleasure.
The devil was piqued such saintship to behold,
And long'd to tempt him, like good Job of old;
But Satan now is wiser than of yore,
And tempts by making rich, not making poor
Pope's Moral Essays.
But who can view the ripen'd rose, nor seek
To wear it? who can curiously behold
The smoothness and the sheen of beauty's chees,
Nor feel the heart can never all grow old?
Byron's Childe Harold Could'st thou boast, oh child of weakness? O'er the sons of wrong and strife, Were their strong temptations planted In thy path of life?
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