And with my hand at midnight held your head;
And, like the watchful minutes to the hour,

Mrs. Hale's Poems. Still and anon cheer'd up the heavy time;
Saying, what lack you? and, where lies your grief?
Shaks. King John.

-If a soul thou wouldst redeem,

And lead a lost one back to God; -
Wouldst thou a guardian-angel seem
To one who long in guilt hath trod,—
Go kindly to him—take his hand

With gentlest words within thine own,
And by his side a brother stand,

Till all the demons thou dethrone.

KINGS.

Within the hollow crown,

That's round the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps Death his court, and there the Antick sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,

Mrs. C. M. Sawyer. Were brass impregnable: and humour'd thus,
Comes at the last, and, with a little pin,
Bores through his castle walls, and—farewell king
Shaks. Richard II.

And if Jove stray, who dares say, Jove doth ill.
Shaks. Pericles.

It is the curse of kings, to be attended
By slaves that take their humours for a warrant,
To break into the bloody house of life;
And, on the winking of authority,

To understand a law, to know the meaning
Of dang'rous majesty; when perchance it frowns
More upon humour, than advis'd respect.

Awake, thou coward majesty! thou sleepest:
Is not the king's name forty thousand names?
Shaks. Richard II.

Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn rev'rence; throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live on bread like you, feel want like you,
Taste grief, need friends, like you: subjected thus,
How can you say to me- -I am a king?

Shaks. Richard II

Let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they dispossess'd:
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd:
All murder'd.

Shaks. Richard II.
Or, I'll be buried in the king's highway;
Shaks. King John. Some way of common tread, where subjects' feet
May hourly trample on their sovereign's head;
For on my heart they tread, now whilst I live;
And buried once, why not upon my head?

Shall the figure of God's majesty,
His captain, steward, deputy elect,
Anointed, crown'd and planted many years,
Be judg'd by subject and inferior breath?

Shaks. Richard II.

Shaks. Richard II. Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow,
The cease of majesty
And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow.
Thou canst help time to furrow me with age,
But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage:
Thy word is current with him for my death,
But, dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath.

Dics not alone; but, like a gulph, doth draw
What's near it, with it: is a massy wheel,
Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortis'd and adjoin'd; which, when it falls.
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist'rous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.
Shaks. Hamlet.

He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself; for on his choice depends
The safety and the health of the whole state,
And therefore must his choice be circumscrib'd
Unto the voice and yielding of that body,
Whereof he is the head.

Shaks. Richard 11.
O majesty!
When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,
That scalds with safety.

Shaks. Henry IV. Part II.
When we are wrong'd, and would unfold our griefs,

We are denied access unto his person,
Even by those men that most have done us wrong.
Shaks. Henry IV. Part II.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Shaks. Hamlet.

Shaks. Henry IV.

Kings, by their example, more do sway,
Than by their pow'r; and men do more obey,
When they are led, than when they are compell'd.
Jonson on King James.
Princes that would their people should do well,
Must at themselves begin, as at the head;
Shaks. Henry V. For men, by their example, pattern out

Their justice, and throw shame upon deservers;

Shaks. Henry IV. Part I. Patience, so wounded, turns a fury

O the state of princes!

How far are we from that security,

We dreamt of, in th' expectance of our crown?
Were foreign dangers nothing, yet we nourish
Our ruin in our bosom.

Kings' titles commonly begin by force,
Which time wears off, and mellows into right;
And power, which in one age is tyranny,

Is ripen'd in the next to true succession.

Dryden's Spanish Friar.

Anon. Sicily and Naples. There like a statue thou hast stood besieg'd

O'tis our folly, folly, my dear friend,
Because we see th' activity of states,
To flatter them with false eternity!

Why longer than the dweller lasts the house?
Why should the world be always, and not man?
Sure kingdoms are as mortal as their kings,
And stay but longer for their period.

By sycophants and fools, the growth of courts'
Where thy gull'd eyes, in all the gaudy round
Met nothing but a lie in every face;
And the gross flatt'ry of a gaping crowd,
Envious who first shall catch and first applaud
The stuff, or royal nonsense.

Dryden's Don Sebastian

Gomersall's Lodovick Sforza. What is a king? -a man condemn'd to bear

Revenge torments, and

Executions are not expressions of a king;
But a destruction: he rivals not

Th' immortal pow'rs in temples, statues,
Adoration, but transcendent virtues,
Divine performances: these are th' additions
By which he climbs to heaven, and appears
A god on earth.

Killegrew's Conspiracy.

The faults kings do,

Shine like the fiery beacon on a hill,
For all to see, and seeing, tremble at.

Hemmings's Fatal Contract.

From the monarch's virtue, subjects take
Th' ingredient which does public virtue make:
At his bright beam they all their tapers light,
And by his dial set their motion right.

The public burthen of the nation's care;
Now crown'd some angry faction to appease;
Now falls a victim to the people's ease;
From the first blooming of his ill-taught youth,
Nourish'd in flattery, and estrang'd from truth,
At home surrounded by a servile crowd,
Prompt to abuse, and in detraction loud;
Abroad begirt with men, and swords, and spears,
His very state acknowledging his fears;
Marching amidst a thousand guards, he shows
His secret terror of a thousand foes:
In war, however prudent, great, or brave,
To blind events and fickle chance a slave;
Seeking to settle what for ever flies,
Sure of the toil, uncertain of the prize.

Prior's Soloman.
The vulgar call us gods, and fondly think,
Sir W. Davenant to the King. That kings are cast in more than mortal moulds:
Alas! they little know that when the mind
Is cloy'd with pomp, our taste is pall'd to joy;
But grows more sensible to grief and pain.
The stupid peasant with as quick a sense
Enjoys the fragrance of the rose as I;

What poor things are kings!
What poorer things are nations to obey
Him, whom a petty passion does command?
Fate, why was man made so ridiculous?
Oh I am mortal. Men but flatter me.

Oh fate! why were not kings made more than And his rough hard hand is proof against the thorn,

men ?

Or why will people have us to be more?
Alas! we govern others, but ourselves
We cannot rule; as our eyes that do see
AL other things, but cannot see themselves.
Fountain's Rewards of Virtue.
Kings, by grasping more than they could hold,
First made their subjects by oppression bold;
And popular sway, by forcing kings to give
More than was fit for subjects to receive,
Ran to the same extremes; and one excess
Made both, by striving to be greater, less.

Denham.

No law betwixt two sov'reigns can decide,
But that of arms, where fortune is the judge,
Soldiers the lawyers, and the bar the field.
Dryden's Love Triumphant.

Which, rankling in my tender skin, would seem
A viper's tooth.

Fenton's Mariamne.

Seek not to govern by the lust of power;
Make not thy will thy law; believe thy people
Thy children all; so shalt thou kindly mix
Their interests with thy own, and fix the basis
Of future happiness in godlike justice.

C. Johnson's Medea.

The man whom heaven appoints
To govern others, should himself first learn
To bend his passions to the sway of reason.
Thomson's Tancred and Sigismunda,
A sovereign's great example forms a people:
The public breast is noble or is vile,
As he inspires it.

Mallett and Thomson's Alfred

Are crowns and empire,
The government and safety of mankind,
Trifles of such light moment, to be left
Like some rich toy, a ring, or fancied gem,
The pledge of parting friends? can kings do this,
And give away a people for a legacy?
Rowe's Lady Jane Grey.
Unbounded power and height of greatness give
To kings that lustre which we think divine;
The wise who know them, know they are but men,
Nay sometimes weak ones too.

Rowe's Ambitious Stepmother.

Let him maintain his pow'r, but not increase it.
The string-prerogative—when strain'd too high
Cracks like the tortur'd chord of harmony,
And spoils the concert between king and subject.
Havard's King Charles I.
The king, who delegates
His pow'r to others' hands, but ill deserves
The crown he wears.

Brooke's Earl of Warwick.

The king that yields to popular commotions,
Is more the slave, than sovereign of his people.
Philips's Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.

A prince, the moment he is crown'd,
Inherits every virtue round,

As emblems of the sovereign power
Like other baubles in the Tower;
Is generous, valiant, just, and wise,
And so continues till he dies;
His humble senate this professes,
In all their speeches, votes, addresses.
But once you fix him in a tomb,
His virtues fade, his vices bloom;
And each perfection wrong imputed,
Is fully at his death confuted.

Then, poet, if you mean to thrive,
Employ your muse on kings alive:
With prudence gathering up a cluster
Of all the virtues you can muster,
Which, form'd into a garland sweet,
Lay humbly at your monarch's feet;
Who, as the odours reach his throne,
Will smile, and think them all his own!
For law and gospel both determine
All virtues lodge in royal ermine.

Embitter all the pompous sweets of empire.
Happier the wretch, `who, at his daily toils,
Sweats for his homely dinner, than a king
In all the dangerous pomp of royalty!
He knows no fears of state to damp his joys;
No treason shakes the humble bed he lies on!
Nor dreads the poison in his peaceful bowls!
Hill's Fair Innocent
A prince is but a man, and man may err;
But when, forgetting his ennobled rank,
He makes due reparation for his faults,
From heaven he pardon hopes, from man de.
mands it.
Murphy's Zobeide.

O royalty! what joys hast thou to boast,
To recompense thy cares? Ambition seems
Swift. The passion of a god. Yet from my throne
Have I with envy seen the naked slave
Rejoicing in the music of his chains,
And singing toil away; and then at eve,
Returning peaceful to his couch of rest:
Whilst I sat anxious and perplex'd with cares;
Projecting, plotting, fearful of events:
Or, like a wounded snake, lay down and writhe,
The sleepless night, upon a bed of state.

Dowe's Sethona

Oh! unhappy state of kings!
Swift. 'Tis well the robe of majesty is gay,
Or who would put it on?
Hannah More's Daniel
Thus on a stall, amidst a country fair,
Old women show of gingerbread their ware!
King David and queen Bathsheba behold,
Strut from their dough majestic, grac'd with gold,
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar

We too are friends to loyalty. We love
The king who loves the law, respects his bounds,
And reigns content within them. Him we serve
Freely and with delight, who leaves us free.
But recollecting still that he is man,
We trust him not too far.

Cowper's Task.