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I count myself in nothing else so happy,
As in a soul rememb'ring my good friends;
And, as my fortune ripens with my love,
It shall be still thy true love's recompense.

Dost thou hear?

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish her election,
She hath seal'd thee for herself: for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
A man, that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks.

Is all the counsel that we two have shar'd,
The sister's vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us-O, and is all forgot?

Shaks. Richard II. All school-day's friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds
Both warbling of one song, both in one key;
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet a union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem:
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart.
Shaks. Midsummer Night's Dream.

Shaks. Hamlet.

So, gentlemen,

With all my love I do commend me to you:
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is

And will you rend our ancient love asunder,

May do, to express his love and friending to you, To join with men in scorning your poor friend? God willing, shall not lack.

Shaks. Hamlet.

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them by the soul with hooks of steel.

Shaks. Hamlet.

In companions

That do converse and waste the time together,
Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love,
There needs must be a like proportion
Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit.
Shaks. Merchant of Venice.
The dearest friend to me, the kindest man,
The best condition'd and unwearied spirit
In doing courtesies; and one in whom
The ancient Roman honour more appears,
Than any that draws breath in Italy.

Shaks. Merchant of Venice.

That we have been familiar,

Ingrate forgetfulness shall poison, rather

It is not friendly, 't is not maidenly:
Our sex as well as I may chide you for it;
Though I alone do feel the injury.

Shaks. Midsummer Night's Dream.
We still have slept together,

Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together;
And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled, and inseparable.

Shaks. As you like it.

I will take your friendship up at use,
And fear not that your profit shall be small;
Your interest shall exceed your principal.
Tourneur's Atheist's Tragedy
True happiness

Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth and choice: nor would I have
Virtue a popular regard pursue:

Let them be good that love me, though but few.
Jonson's Cynthia's Revels.
Turn him, and see his threads: look, if he be

Than pity note how much.-Therefore, be gone. Friend to himself, that would be friend to thee:

Shaks. Coriolanus.

By heav'n I cannot flatter: I defy
The tongues of soothers; but a braver place
In my heart's love, hath no man than yourself;
Nay, task me to my word; approve me, lord.

For that is first requir'd, a man be his own;
But he that's too much that, is friend to none.
Jonson's Underwood.
Friendship is the cement of two minds,
As of one man the soul and body is;

Shaks. Henry IV. Part 1. Of which one cannot sever but the other
Suffers a needful separation.

As we do turn our backs

From our companion, thrown into his grave:
So his familiars to his buried fortunes
Slink all away: leave their false vows with him,
Like empty purses pick'd; and his poor self,
A dedicated beggar to the air,

With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty,

Walks, like contempt, alone.

Chapman's Revenge
Friendship's an abstract of love's noble flame,
"T is love refin'd, and purg'd from all its dross
The next to angel's love, if not the same,
As strong in passion is, though not so gross.
It antedates a glad eternity,
And is a heaven in epitome.

Shaks. Timon of Athens.

Catherine Philips

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I do here entertain a friendship with thee,
Shall drown the memory of all patterns past;
We will oblige by turns and that so thick
And fast, that curious studiers of it
Shall not once dare to cast it up, or say,
By way of guess, whether thou or I
Remain debtors when we come to die.

Suckling's Aglaura. Friendship's an empty name, made to deceive Those whose good nature tempts them to believe; There's no such thing on earth, the best that we Can hope for here is faint neutrality.

Tuke's Adventures. He ought not to pretend to friendship's name, Who reckons not himself and friend the same. Tuke's Adventures.

Friendship above all ties does bind the heart;
And faith in friendship is the noblest part.
Earl of Orrery's Henry V.
Trust is the strongest bond upon the soul;
That sacred tie has virtue oft begot;
It binds where 'tis, and makes it where 't was not.
Earl of Orrery's Henry V.
Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends
Not on the number, but the choice of friends.

Cowley.

In their nonage, a sympathy
Unusual join'd their loves:
They pair'd like turtles; still together drank,
Together eat, nor quarrell'd for the choice.
Like turning streams both from one fountain
fell,

And as they ran still mingled smiles and tears.
Lee's Casar Borgia.

I had a friend that lov'd me:

I was his soul: he liv'd not but in me:
We were so close within each other's breast,
The rivets were not found that join'd us first.
That does not reach us yet: we were so mix'd,
As meeting streams - both to ourselves were

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Angels from friendship gather half their joy.

Young.

Such is the use and noble end of friendship,
To bear a part in every storm of fate,
And, by dividing, make the lighter weight.
Higgons's Generous Conqueror.
Friendship is still accompany'd with virtue,
And always lodg'd in great and gen'rous minds.
Trap's Abramule.
The friendships of the world are oft
Confed'racies in vice, or leagues of pleasure.
Addison's Cato.
Great souls by instinct to each other turn,
Demand alliance, and in friendship burn.

Addison's Campaign.
Thanks to my stars, I have not rang'd about
The wilds of life, ere I could find a friend:
Nature first pointed out my brother to me,
And early taught me, by her sacred force,
To love thy person, ere I knew thy merit,
Till what was instinct grew up into friendship.
Ours has severest virtue for its basis,
And such a friendship ends not but with life.

Addison.

You'll find the friendship of the world a show! Mere outward show! 't is like the harlot's tears, The statesman's promise, or false patriot's zeal, Full of fair seeming, but delusion all.

Savage's Sir Thomas Overbury. I have too deeply read mankind To be amus'd with friendship; 't is a name Invented merely to betray credulity: 'Tis intercourse of interest- not of souls.

Havard's Regulus. Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul! Sweet'ner of life, and solder of society! I owe thee much. Thou hast deserv'd of me Far, far beyond what I can ever pay. Oft have I prov'd the labours of thy love: And the warm efforts of the gentle heart, Anxious to please.

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Blair's Grave.

Knit to him The hearts he opens like a clasped book.

Willia

The friend

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.
Goldsmith's Hermit.
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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Mrs Well

There are a thousand nameless ties,

Which only such as feel them know; Of kindred thoughts, deep sympathies, And untold fancy spells, which throw O'er ardent minds and faithful hearts

A chain whose charmed links so blend, That the light circlet but imparts

Its force in these fond words, my friend.
Mrs. Dinnies.

The blossoms of passion,

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.

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FURY.

And when the most obdurate swear they do not,
Their trembling hearts belie their boasting tongues.

Dryden's Spanish Friar.

Divines but peep on undiscover'd worlds, And draw the distant landscape as they please; Now he'll outstare the lightning. To be furious But who has e'er return'd from those bright regions, Is to be frighted out of fear; and in that mood To tell their manners, and relate their laws? The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still Dryden's Don Sebastian. 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.

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.

Shaks. Julius Cæsar.
O heaven! that one might read the book of fate,

Ana see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sca.

O, if this were seen,

Addison's Cato.

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?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
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 each 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 firc;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

Darkly we move, we press upon the brink
Haply of viewless worlds, and know it not:
Yes, it may be, that nearer than we think
Are those whom death has parted from our lot!
Mrs. Hemans's Poems.

Let me, then let me dream

That love goes with us to the shore unknown; So o'er the burning tear a heavenly gleam In mercy shall be thrown.

Mrs. Hemans's Poems.

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?

Pope's Essay on Man. Is it for this fair virtue oft must strive

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 rise, 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,
Yet is not what it seems. Then what am I?
Death must unfold the mystery!

Dowe's Sethona.
What avails it that indulgent heaven
From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes 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."

Mrs. Hemans's Poems.

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