A Complete Dictionary of Poetical Quotations: Comprising the Most Excellent ...

Ah! little think the gay licentious proud,
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround;
They, who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth,
And wanton, often cruel, riot waste;

Ah! little think they, while they dance along,
How many feel, this very moment, death,
And all the sad variety of pain!

Thomson's Seasons.
Even in the vale, where wisdom loves to dwell,
With friendship, peace, and contemplation join'd,
How many, rack'd with honest passions, droop
In deep retir'd distress.

Thomson's Seasons.

The days of life are sisters; all alike;
None just the same; which serve to fool us on
Through blasted hopes, with change of fallacy;
While joy is, like to-morrow, still to come:
Nor ends the fruitless chase but in the grave.
Young's Brothers.
Vain man! to be so fond of breathing long,
And spinning out a thread of misery:
The longer life the greater choice of evil;
The happiest man is but a wretched thing,
That steals poor comfort from comparison.

Young's Busiris.

Ah! what is human life?
How, like the dial's tardy moving shade,
Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd!
The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth;
Too subtle is the movement to be seen;
Yet soon the hour is up- and we are gone.
Young's Busiris.

The smoothest course of nature has its pains;
And truest friends, through error, wound our rest.
Without misfortune, what calamities?
And what hostilities, without a foe?
Nor are foes wanting to the best on earth.
But endless is the list of human ills,
And sighs might sooner fail, than cause to sigh.
Young's Night Thoughts.

Life's little stage is a small eminence,
Inch-high the grave above; that home of man,
Where dwells the multitude: we gaze around;
We read their monuments; we sigh; and while
We sigh, we sink; and are what we deplor'd;
Lamenting, or lamented, all our lot.

Young's Night Thoughts.
Ere man has measur'd half his weary stage,
His luxuries have left him no reserve,
No maiden relishes, no unbroacht delights;
On cold-serv'd repetitions he subsists,
And in the tasteless present chews the past;
Disgusted chews, and scarce can swallow down.
Young's Night Thoughts.

Like some fair hum'rists, life is most enjoy'd,
When courted least; most worth, when dis
esteem'd. Young's Night Thoughts.

Why all this toil for triumphs of an hour?
What tho' we wade in wealth, or soar in fame?
Earth's highest station ends in "Here he lies "
And "dust to dust"-concludes her noblest song.
Young's Night Thoughts
Behold the picture of earth's happiest man:
He calls his wish, it comes; he sends it back,
And says he call'd another; that arrives,
Meets the same welcome; yet he still calls on;
Till one calls him, who varies not his call,
But holds him fast, in chains of darkness bound,
Till nature dies, and judgment sets him free;
A freedom far less welcome than his chain.

Young's Night Thoughts.

To-day is so like yesterday, it cheats;
We take the lying sister for the same;
Life glides away, Lorenzo, like a brook;
For ever changing, unperceiv'd the change.
Young's Night Thoughts.
Man, ill at ease,

In this, not his own place, this foreign field,
Where nature fodders him with other food
Than was ordain'd his cravings to suffice,
Poor in abundance, famish'd at a feast,
Sighs for something more, when most enjoy d.
Young's Night Thoughts
How frail men, things! How momentary both!
Fantastic chase of shadow's hunting shades!
Young's Night Thoughts.
There's not a day, but, to the man of thought,
Betrays some secret, that throws new reproach
On life, and makes him sick of seeing more.
Young's Night Thoughts.

On life's gay stage, one inch above the grave,
The proud run up and down in quest of eyes;
The sensual, in pursuit of something worse;
The grave, of gold; the politic, of power;
And all, of other butterflies, as vain.

Young's Night Thoughts
How must a spirit, late escaped from earth,
The truth of things new blazing in its eye,
Look back, astonish'd, on the ways of men,
Whose lives' whole drift is to forget their graves:
Young's Night Thoughts

Be wise with speed;

A fool at forty is a fool indeed.

Young's Love of Fame
The present moment, like a wife, we shun,
And ne'er enjoy, because it is our own.

Young's Love of Fame.

Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train; | 'Tis but a night, a long and moonless night;
Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain;
We make the grave our bed, and then are gone.
Blair's Grave,

These, mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind;
The lights and shades whose well-accorded strife
Gives all the strength and colour of our life.

Pope's Essay on Man.
O thoughtless mortals! ever blind to fate,
Too soon dejected, and too soon elate!

Pope's Rape of the Lock.
When men once reach their autumn, sickly joys
Fall off apace, as yellow leaves from trees,
At every little breath misfortune blows;
Till left quite naked of their happiness,
In the chill blasts of winter they expire:
This is the common lot.

And to retain thee part with pomp and titles?
To buy thy presence, the gold-watching miser
Will pour his mouldy bags of treasure out,
And grow at once a prodigal. The wretch
Clad with disease and poverty's thin coat,
Yet holds thee fast, though painful company.
Havard's King Charles I.
O life! thou universal wish; what art thou?
Thou 'rt but a dog-a few uneasy hours:
Thy morn is greeted by the flocks and herds;
And every bird that flatters with its note,
Salutes thy rising sun: thy noon approaching,
Then haste the flies and every creeping insect,
To bask in thy meridian; that declining,
As quickly they depart, and leave thy evening
To mourn the absent ray: night at hand,
Then croaks the raven conscience, time misspent,
The owl despair seems hideous, and the bat
Confusion flutters up and down -
Life's but a lengthen'd day not worth the waking
for.
Havard's King Charles I.

I've tried this world in all its changes,
States and conditions; have been great and happy,
Wretched and low, and pass'd thro' all its stages.
And oh! believe me, who have known it best,
It is not worth the bustle that it costs;
'Tis but a medley, all of idle hopes,
And abject childish fears.

Madden's Themistocles.

To be, is better far than not to be,
Else nature cheated us in our formation.
And when we are, the sweet delusion wears
Such various charms and prospects of delight;
That what we could not will, we make our choice,
Desirous to prolong the life she gave.

Sewell's Sir W. Raleigh,

To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,
The unfeeling for his own.

Gray's Eton College.

These shall the fury passions tear,
The vulture of the mind,
Disdainful anger, pallid fear,
And shame that skulks behind;
Or pining love, shall waste their youth,
Or jealousy, with rankling tooth,
That inly gnaws the secret heart.
And envy wan, and faded care,
Grim-visag'd comfortless despair,
And sorrow's piercing dart.
Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
Then whirl the wretch from high,
To bitter scorn a sacrifice,
And grinning infamy.

The stings of falsehood those shall try,
And hard unkindness' alter'd eye,
That mocks the tear it forc'd to flow;
And keen remorse, with blood defil'd,
And moody madness laughing wild
Amid scverest woe.

Lo! in the vale of years beneath
A grisly troop are seen,

The painful family of deat

More hideous than their queen:
This racks the joints, this fires the veins,

That every labouring sinew strains,

Those in the deeper vitals rage:

Lo, poverty, to fill the band,

That numbs the soul with icy hand,
And slow consuming age.

Gray's Eton College.

To contemplation's sober eye
Such is the race of man:

And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay

But flutter through life's little day,
In fortune's varying colours drest:
Brush'd by the hand of rough mischance;
Or chill'd by age, their airy dance
They leave in dust to rest.

|How readily we wish'd time spent revok'd,
That we might try the ground again, where once
(Through inexperience as we now perceive)
We miss'd that happiness we might have found.
Cowper's Task

Ask what is human life-the sage replies
With disappointment low'ring in his eyes,
A painful passage o'er a restless flood,
A vain pursuit of fugitive false good,

A sense of fancied bliss and heart-felt care,

Gray's Spring. Closing at last in darkness and despair.
Cowper's Hope.

Life's buzzing sounds and flatt'ring colours play
Round our fond sense, and waste the day,
Enchant the fancy, vex the labouring soul;
Each rising sun, each lightsome hour,
Beholds the busy slavery we endure;

Nor is our freedom full, or contemplation pure,
When night and sacred silence overspread the soul.

In such a world, so thorny, and where none
Finds happiness unblighted, or, if found,
Without some thistly sorrow at its side,
It seems the part of wisdom, and no sin
Against the law of love, to measure lots
With less distinguish'd than ourselves, that thus
We
may
with patience bear our mod'rate ills,
And sympathize with others, suffering more.
Cowper's Task.

All has its date below. The fatal hour
Was register'd in heaven ere time began.
We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works
Die too. The deep foundations that we lay,
Time ploughs them up, and not a trace remains.
We build with what we deem eternal rock,
A distant age asks where the fabric stood?
And in the dust, sifted and search'd in vain,
The undiscoverable secret sleeps.

Cowper's Task.

Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where fame's proud temple shines afar?
Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime
Has felt the influence of malignant star,

And wag'd with fortune an eternal war?
Check'd by the scoff of pride, by envy's frown,
And poverty's unconquerable bar,

In life's low vale remote has pin'd alone,
Then dropt into the grave, unpitied and unknown
Beattie's Minstrel

Life is but a day at most,
Sprung from night, in darkness lost;
Hope not sunshine ev'ry hour,
Fear not clouds will always lower.

Burns

Oh life! how pleasing is thy morning,
Young fancy's rays the hills adorning !
Cold-pausing-cautious lessons scorning,
We frisk away.

Like school-boys, at the expected warning,
To joy and play.

We wander there, we wander here,
We eye the rose upon the brier,
Unmindful that the thorn is near
Among the leaves;

And though the puny wound appear,
Short while it grieves.

Ah! happy boys! such feelings pure,
They will not, cannot long endure;
Condemn'd to stem the world's rude tide,
You may not linger by the side;
For fate shall thrust you from the shore,
And passion ply the sail and oar.

Burns

Moore.

With as we may, and least in humblest stations,
Where hunger swallows all in one low want,
And the original ordinance, that man
Must sweat for his poor pittance, keeps all passions
Aloof, save fear of famine! All is low,
And false, and hollow- - clay from first to last,
The prince's urn no less than potter's vessel.
Byron's Two Foscari,
Between two worlds life hovers like a star,
'Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge.
How little do we know that which we are!
How less what we may be! the eternal surge
Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar
Our bubbles; as the old burst, new emerge
Lash'd from the foam of ages; while the graves

We wither from our youth, we gasp away.
Sick-sick; unfound the boon - unslaked the Of empires heave but like some passing waves.

thirst,

Though to the last, in verge of our decay,
Some phantom lures, such as we thought at first-
But all too late, -
- so are we doubly curst,
Love, fame, ambition, avarice -'tis the same,
Each idle-and all ill- and none the worst-
For all are meteors with a different name,
And death the sable smoke where vanishes the
flame.
Byron's Childe Harold.

We are fools of time and terror: days
Steal on us and steal from us; yet we live,
Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.
In all the days of this detested yoke-
This vital weight upon the struggling heart,
Which sinks with sorrow, or beats quick with pain,
Or joy that ends in agony or faintness -
In all the days of past and future, for
In life there is no present, we may number
How few, how less than few-wherein the soul
forbears to pant for death, and yet draws back
As from a stream in winter, though the chill
Be but a moment's.

Вугол

The spell is broke the charm is flown!
Thus is it with life's fitful fever;
We madly smile when we should groan;
Delirium is our best deceiver.
Each lucid interval of thought
Recalls the woes of nature's charter,
And he that acts as wise men ought,
But lives—as saints have died. — a martyr.
Byron.

O love! O glory! what are ye? who fly
Around us ever, rarely to alight:
There's not a meteor in the polar sky
Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight.

There are a number of us creep
Into this world to eat and sleep;

And know no reason why they're born,
But merely to consume the corn,
Devour the cattle, fowl, and fish,
And leave behind an empty dish.
Though crows and ravens do the same,
Unlucky birds of hateful name,
Ravens or crows might fill their places,
And swallow corn and eat carcases.
Then if their tombstones when they die,
Be n't taught to flatter and to lie,
There's nothing better will be said,
Than that they've eat up all their bread,
Drunk all their drink and gone to bed.

Byron.

Dr. Franklin's Paraphrase of Horace.
There never breathes a man who, when his life
Was closing, might not of that life relate
Toils long and hard.

Wordsworth.

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Coleridge."Life is before ye!"-and as now ye stand

Southey.

There are points from which we can command
our life;

When the soul sweeps the future like a glass;
And coming things, full-freighted with our fate,
Jut out on the dark offing of the mind.

Bailey's Festus.
Living men look on all who live askance.

Bailey's Festus.

We live in deeds, not years—in thoughts, not

breaths

In feelings, not in figures on a dial;

Eager to spring upon the promised land,

Fair smiles the way where yet your feet have troa
But few light steps, upon a flowery sod:

Round ye are youth's green bowers-and to your

eyes,

Tho' horizon's line but joints the earth and skies.
Daring and triumph, pleasure, fame and joy;
Friendship unwavering, love without alloy,
Brave thoughts of noble deeds, and glory won
Like angels, beckon ye to venture on.

Frances Kemble Butic

"Life is before ye!"- from the fated road
Ye cannot turn then take ye up the load.
Not yours to tread or leave the unknown way,
Ye must go o'er it, meet ye what ye may.
Gird up your souls within you to the deed,
Angels and fellow-spirits bid ye speed!

What though the brightness wane, the pleasure
fade,

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most The glory dim! Oh not of these is made

lives,

Who thinks most-feels the noblest-acts the best.
Bailey's Festus.

The awful life that to your trust is given,
Children of God! Inheritors of Heaven!
Frances Kemble Butler

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