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Amid the flux of many thousand years,
That oft has swept the toiling race of men,
And all their labour'd monuments away,
Firm, unremitting, matchless in their course;
To the kind-temper'd change of night and day,
And of the seasons ever stealing round,
Minutely faithful: Such the all-perfect hand!
That pois'd, impels, and rules the steady whole.
Thomson's Seasons-Summer.

Yet Providence, that ever waking eye,
Looks down with pity on the feeble toil
Of mortals lost to hope, and lights them safe,
Through all the dreary labyrinth of fate.

Ibid-Winter.

Father of light and life! thou Good Supreme!
O teach me what is good! teach me thyself!
Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,

From every low pursuit! and feed my soul

With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure; Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!

In the vast, and the minute, we see
The unambiguous footsteps of the God

Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing,

And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds.

Ibid.

Cowper's Task.

What prodigies can power divine perform
More grand, than it produces year by year,
And all in sight of inattentive man?
Familiar with th' effect we slight the cause,
And in the constancy of nature's course,
The regular return of genial months,
And renovation of a faded world,
See nought to wonder at.

Ibid, b. 6.

DELAY.

Your gift is princely, but it comes too late,
And falls, like sun-beams, on a blasted blossom.

Suckling's Brennoralt.

Go, fool, and teach a cataract to creep!

Can thirst of empire, vengeance, beauty, wait?

Young's Brothers, a. 2.

Our greatest actions, or of good or evil,
The hero's and the murderer's, spring at once
From this conception: Oh, how many deeds
Of deathless virtue and immortal crime
The world had wanted, had the actor said,
I will do this to-morrow!

Lord John Russell's Don Carlos.

Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.

Young's Night Thoughts, n. 1.

Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.

DESPAIR.

Methinks we stand on ruin; Nature shakes
About us; and the universal frame's
So loose, that it but wants another push
To leap from its hinges.

Ibid.

Lee's Edipus.

What miracle

Can work me into hope! Heav'n here is bankrupt,
The wond'ring gods blush at the want of power,
And quite abash'd confess they cannot help me.
Lee's Mithridates.

Curs'd fate! malicious stars! you now have drain'd
Yourselves of all your poisonous influence;
Ev'n the last baleful drop is shed upon me!

Lee's Mithridates.

My loss is such as cannot be repair'd,
And to the wretched, life can be no mercy.

Dryden's Marriage à la Mode.

Consider how the desperate fight ;Despair strikes wild,—but often fatal tooAnd in the mad encounter wins success.

Havard's Regulus.

Tell me why, good Heav'n!

Thou mad'st me what I am, with all the spirit,
Aspiring thoughts, and elegant desires,

That fill the happy'st man? Ah! rather, why
Did'st not thou form me sordid as my fate,
Base-minded, dull, and fit to carry burdens ?
Why have I sense to know the curse that's on me?
Is this just dealing, Nature?

Otway's Venice Preserved.

Let her rave,

And prophesy ten thousand thousand horrors;
I could join with her now, and bid 'em come;
They fit the present fury of my soul.

The stings of love and rage are fix'd within,
And drive me on to madness. Earthquakes, whirl-
winds,

A general wreck of nature now would please me.

Rowe's Royal Convert, a. 3, s. 1.

Talk not of comfort, 'tis for lighter ills:
I will indulge my sorrows, and give way,
To all the pangs and fury of despair. Addison's Cato.

O Lucius, I am sick of this bad world!

The day-light and the sun grow painful to me. Ibid.

Whether first nature, or long want of peace,
Has wrought my mind to this, I cannot tell ;
But horrors now are not displeasing to me;
I like this rocking of the battlements.

Rage on, ye winds; burst clouds, and waters roar !
You bear a just resemblance of my fortune,

And suit the gloomy habit of my soul!

Young's Revenge, a. 1.

Why let them come; let in the raging torrent :
I wish the world would rise in arms against me;
For I must die; and I would die in state.

Young's Busiris, a. 4.

All judging heav'n

Was there no bolt, no punishment above?—
No none is equal to despairing love:

Hell loudly owns it, and the damn'd themselves
Smile to behold a wretch more curs'd than they.
Havard's Scanderbeg.

When desperate ills demand a speedy cure,
Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.

Dr. Johnson's Irene.

Mine after-life! what is mine after-life?
My day is closed! the gloom of night is come!
A hopeless darkness settles o'er my fate.

Joanna Baillie's Basil, a. 4, s. 3.

Welcome rough war; with all thy scenes of blood;
Thy roaring thunders, and thy clashing steel!
Welcome once more! what have I now to do
But play the brave man o'er again, and die ?

Be it what it may, or bliss, or torment,
Annihilation, dark, and endless rest,

Ibid.

Or some dread thing, man's wildest range of thought Hath never yet conceiv'd, that change I'll dare

Which makes me any thing but what I am.

Ibid. a. 5, s. 2.

I would have time turn'd backward in his course,
And what is past ne'er to have been myself
A thing that no existence ever had.

Canst thou do this for me?

Joanna Baillie's Rayner, a. 4, s. 2.

O, that I were upon some desert coast!
Where howling tempests and the lashing tide
Would stun me into deep and senseless quiet!

Joanna Baillie's De Montfort, a. 4, s. 2.
Come madness! come unto me senseless death!
I cannot suffer this! Here, rocky wall,
Scatter these brains, or dull them!

Ibid. a. 5, s. 2.

O that I had been form'd

An idiot from the birth! a senseless changeling,
Who eats his glutton's meal with greedy haste,
Nor knows the hand who feeds him. Ibid. a. 5, s. 4.

He hangs upon me like a dead man's grasp

On the wreck'd swimmer's neck.

Joanna Baillie's Ethwald, a. 4, s. 1.

Full many a storm on this grey head has beat;
And now, on my high station do I stand,
Like the tired watchman in his air-rock'd tower,
Who looketh for the hour of his release.

I'm sick of worldly broils, and fain would rest
With those who war no more.

Ibid. a. 4, s. 6.

O night, when good men rest, and infants sleep!
Thou art to me no season of repose,

But a fear'd time of waking more intense,
Of life more keen, of misery more palpable.

Ibid. pt. 2, a. 4, s. 2.

Thou sayest I am a wretch

And thou sayest true-these weeds do witness itThese wave-worn weeds-these bare and bruised limbs,

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