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Virtue, our present peace, our future prize, Man's unprecarious, natural estate, mprovable at will, in virtue lies;

Its tenure sure; its income is divine.

Young's Night Thoughts. High worth is elevated place: 't is more; It makes the past stand candidate for thee; Makes more than monarchs, makes an honest

man;

Tho' no exchequer it commands, 't is wealth;
And tho' it wears no riband, 't is renown;
Renown that would not quit thee, tho' disgrac'd,
Nor leave thee pendent on a master's smile.
Young's Night Thoughts.

How oft that virtue, which some women boast,
And pride themselves in, is but an empty name,
No real good; in thought alone possess'd.
Safe in the want of charms, the homely dame,
Secure from the seducing arts of man,
Deceives herself, and thinks she's passing chaste;
Wonders how others e'er could fall, yet when
She talks most loud about the noisy nothing,
Look on her face, and there you read her virtue.
Frowde's Philotas.
But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed?
What then? is the reward of virtue bread?
That, vice may merit-'t is the price of toil;
The knave deserves it, when he tills the soil;
The knave deserves it, when he tempts the main,
Where folly fights for kings, or dives for gain.
The good man may be weak, be indolent,
Nor is his claim to plenty, but content.
But grant him riches, your demand is o'er?
No-shall the good want health, the good want
power?

Add health and power, and ev'ry earthly thing, Why bounded power? why private? why no king?

Nay, why external for internal given?
Why is not man a God, and earth a heaven?
Who ask and reason thus, will scarce conceive
God gives enough, while he has more to give;
Immense the power, immense were the demand;
Say, at what part of nature will they stand?
Pope's Essay on Man.

Count all th' advantage prosperous vice attains,
"Tis but what virtue flies from and disdains:
And grant the bad what happiness they would,
One they must want-which is, to pass for good.
O blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below,
Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe!
Who sees and follows that great scheme the best
Best knows the blessing and will most be blest.
Pope's Essay on Man.

What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,
The soul's calm sunshine, and the heartfelt
joy,

Is virtue's prize; a better would you fix?
Then give humility a coach and six,
Justice a conqueror's sword, or truth a gown,
Or public spirit its great cure, a crown.
Weak foolish man! will heaven reward us there
With the same trash mad mortals wish for
here ?

The boy and man an individual makes,
Yet sigh'st thou now for apples and for cakes?
Go, like the Indian, in another life
Expect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife;
As well as dream such trifles are assign'd
As toys and empires, for a godlike mind;
Rewards, that either would to virtue bring
No joy, or be destructive of the thing.

Pope's Essay on Man.

O virtue! virtue! as thy joys excel,
So are thy woes transcendent; the gross world
Knows not the bliss or misery of either.

Thomson's Agamemnon.

Believe the muse, the wintry blast of death Kills not the buds of virtue; no, they spread, Beneath the heavenly beams of brighter suns, Thro' endless ages, into higher powers.

Thomson's Seasons.

Unblest by virtue, government a league
Becomes, a circling junto of the great,
To rob by law; religion mild a yoke
To tame the stooping soul, a trick of state
To mask their rapine, and to share the prey,
What are without it senates, save a face
Of consultation deep and reason free,
While the determin'd voice and heart are sold?
What boasted freedom save a sounding name?
And what election, but a market vile
Of slaves self-barter'd?

Thomson's Liberty.

Is aught so fair

In all the dewy landscapes of the spring,
In the bright eye of Hesper or the morn,
In nature's fairest forms, is aught so fair
As virtuous friendship? as the candid blush
Of him who strives with fortune to be just?
The graceful tear that streams for others' woes?
Or the mild majesty of private life,
Where peace with ever-blooming olive crowns
The gate; where honour's liberal hands effuse
Unenvied treasures, and the snowy wings
Of innocence and love protect the scene?

Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination.

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Thou know'st but little, Zaphna,

If thou dost think true virtue is confin'a

To climes or systems; no, it flows spontaneous, Like life s warm stream, throughout the whole creation,

And beats the pulse of every healthful heart.
Miller's Mahomet.

All private virtue is the public fund:
As that abounds, the state decays, or thrives:
Each should contribute to the general stock,
And who lends most, is most his country's friend.
Jephson's Braganza.
Be virtuous ends pursued by virtuous means,
Nor think th' intention sanctifies the deed:
That maxim publish'd in an impious age
Would loose the wild enthusiast to destroy,
And fix the fierce usurper's bloody title.
Then bigotry might send her slaves to war,
And bid success become the test of truth!
Unpitying massacre might waste the world,
And persecution boast the call of heav'n.

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Virtue in itself commands its happiness,
Of every outward object independent.

Francis's Eugenia. Virtue, (for mere good nature is a fool,) Is sense and spirit with humanity: "Tis sometimes angry, and its frown confounds; "T is even vindictive, but in vengeance just. Knaves fain would laugh at it; some great ones dare;

But at his heart the most undaunted son
Of fortune dreads its name and awful charms.
Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health.

Virtue, the strength and beauty of the soul,
Is the best gift of heaven: a happiness
That even above the smiles and frowns of fate
Exalts great nature's favourites; a wealth
That ne'er encumbers, nor can be transferr'd.
Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health.

'Tis not for mortals always to be blest,
But him the least the dull of painful hours
Of life oppress, whom sober sense conducts,
And virtue, through this labyrinth we tread.
Virtue and sense I mean not to disjoin;
Virtue and sense are one; and trust me, still
A faithless heart betrays the head unsound.
Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health.

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Morality 's the right rule for the world,
Nor could society cohere without
Virtue; and there are those whose spirits walk
Abreast of angels and the future here.

Bailey's Festus.
Virtue! how many as a lowly thing,
Born of weak folly, scorn thee! but thy name
Alone they know; upon thy soaring wing

They'll fear to mount, nor could thy sacred flame

Burn in their baser hearts: the biting thorn,
The flinty crag, flowers hiding, strew thy field;
Yet blest is he whose daring bides the scorn
Of the frail, easy herd, and buckles on thy
shield.

Who says thy ways are bliss, trolls but a lay
To lure the infant; if thy paths, to view,
Were always pleasant, crime's worst sons would
lay

Their daggers at thy feet, and, from mere sloth
Mrs. Maria Brooks.

pursue.

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How silvery sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, | And ever its chorus seem'd to be
Like softest music to attending ears!
The mingled voices of household glee,
Like the gush of winds in a mountain tree
J. Bayard Taylor's Poems
Who taught that tiny voice of thine
Its wealth of sweetness, child?
Who tun'd each tone to love divine,

Shaks. Romeo and Juliet.
That voice was wont to come in gentle whispers,
And fill my ears with the soft breath of love.

"T was like the stealing

Otway.

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Low voices with the ministering hand

Hung round the sick.

Tennyson's Princess.

The voice that won me first!

Oh, what a tide of recollections rush
Upon my drowning soul!

Lastly stood war, in glitt'ring arms yclad,
With visage grim, stern looks, and blackly hued;
In his right hand, a naked sword he had,
That to the hilts was all with blood imbru'd
And in his left (that kings and kingdoms rued,)
Famine and fire he held, and therewithal

Mrs. Louisa J. Hall. He razed towns, and threw down tow'rs all-all

Strange! that one lightly-whisper'd tone

Is far, far sweeter unto me,
Thar. all the sounds that kiss the earth,
Or breathe along the sea;
But, lady, when thy voice I greet,
Not heaven.y music seems so sweet!

O. W. Holmes.
How vain are all the trials we meet with here,
If we but feel a better world is near,
And voices from the lov'd and lost our weary
spirit cheer.
J. Bayard Taylor.

Lord Dorset in the Mirror for Magistrates.
Now all the youth of England are on fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;
Now thrive the armourers, and honour's thought
Reigns solely in the breast of every man.

Shaks. Henry V.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot;
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge,
Cry-God for Harry, England, and saint George!
Shaks. Henry V.

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage:
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

Let it pry through the portage of the head,

He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his friends,
And say- to-morrow is Saint Crispin :
Then will he strip his sleeve, and show his scars,
And say, these wounds I had on Crispin's day.
Shaks. Henry V.

Like the brass cannon, let the brow o'erwhelm it, 'Tis positive 'gainst all exception, lords,
As fearfully, as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.

That our superfluous lacqueys, and our peasants,

Who, in unnecessary action, swarm

About our squares of battle, were enough

Shaks. Henry V. To purge this field of such a hilding foe.

In a moment, look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by their silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls;
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes;
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus'd
Do break the clouds.
Shaks. Henry V.

The gates of mercy shall be all shut up;

Shaks. Henry V.

Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
Unpruned dies; her hedges, ever pleach'd, —
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,
Put forth disorder'd twigs: her fallow leas,
The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory,
Do root upon; while that the coulter rusts,
That should deracinate such savagery.
Shaks. Henry V.

Tell me, he that knows,

And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of Why are such daily cast of brazen cannon,

heart,

In liberty of bloody hand, shall range
With conscience wide as hell; mowing like

grass

Your fresh fair virgins and your flow'ring maids.
Shaks. Henry V.

Now on, you noblest English,
Whose blood is fetch'd from fathers of war-proof;
Fathers, that, like so many Alexanders,
Have, in these parts, from morn till even fought,
And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument.
Shaks. Henry V.
Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills,
They shall be fam'd; for there the sun shall greet
them,

And draw their honours reeking up to heaven;
Leaving their earthly parts to choak your clime.
Shaks. Henry V.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he, to-day, that sheds his blood with me,
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

And foreign mart of implements of war?
Why such impress of ship-wrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week?
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint labourer with the day;

Who is 't that can inform me?

Shaks. Hamlet.

Now, for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty,
Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest,
And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace:
Now powers from home, and discontent at home,
Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits
(As doth a raven on a sick-fallen beast)
The imminent decay of wrested pomp.

Shaks. King John.

Know, the gallant monarch is in arms;
And like an eagle o'er aery towers,
To souse annoyance that comes near his nest.
Shaks. King John.

The cannons have their bowels full of wrath.
And ready mounted are they, to spit forth
Their iron indignation gainst your walls.
Shaks. King John.

Shall think themselves accurs'd, they were not To arms! be champions of our church!

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O inglorious league!

Shall we, upon the footing of our land,
Send fair-play orders, and make compromise,
Insinuation, parley, and base truce,

To arms invasive? Shall a beardless boy,
A cocker'd silken wanton brave our fields,
And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil,
Mocking the air with colours idly spread,
And find no check? let us, my liege, to arms.
Shaks. King John.

For the love of all the gods,
Let's leave the hermit pity with our mother;
And when we have our armours buckled on,
The venom'd vengeance ride upon our swords.
Shaks. Troilus and Cressida.

I care not for thee, Kate; this is no world
To play with mammets, and to tilt with lips:
We must have bloody noses, and crack'd crowns,
And pass them current too.-God's me, my horse!
Shaks, Henry IV. Part I.
He is their god; he leads them like a thing,
Made by some other deity than nature,
That shapes men better: and they follow him,
Against us brats with no less confidence,
Than boys pursuing summer butterflies,
Or butchers killing flies.

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He hath fought to-day,

As if a god, in hate of mankind, had
Destroy'd in such a shape.

Shaks. Antony and Cleopatra.

Your honour calls you hence

Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly,

And all the gods go with you! upon your sword Sit laurel victory! and smooth success

Be strew'd before your feet.

Shaks. Antony and Cleopatra. What, stand'st thou idle here? lend me thy sword; Many a nobleman is stark and stiff Under the hoofs of vaunting enemies, Whose deaths are unreveng'd.

Shaks. Henry IV. Part I.

Wars are no strife,

To the dark house and the detested wife.

Shaks. All's Well

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Why have they dared to march
So many miles upon her peaceful bosom;
Frighting her pale-faced villages with war,
And ostentation of despiteful arms?

Shaks. Richard II.
Ah, gracious lord, these days are dangerous!
Virtue is chok'd with foul ambition,
And charity chas'd hence by rancour's hand;
Foul subornation is predominant,
And equity exil'd your highness' land.

Shaks. Henry IV. Part II. Then, in the name of God, and all these rights, Advance your standards, draw your willing swords: For me the ransom of my bold attempt Shall be this cold corse on the earth's cold face; But if I thrive, the gain of my attempt The least of you shall share his part thereof. Shaks. Richard III I think there be six Richmonds in the field; Five have I slain to-day, instead of him. Shaks. Richard III.

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