Woman is not undevelopt man,
But diverse could we make her as the man,
Sweet love were slain, whose dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference:
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care:
More as the double-natur'd poet each;
Till at the last she set herself to man
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time,
Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To be,
Self-reverent each, and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other, even as those who love.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to men:
Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and
calm:
Then springs the crowning race of humankind.
May these things be!
Earlier than I know
Immers'd in rich foreshadowings of the world,
I lov'd the woman: he that doth not, lives
A drowning life, besotted in sweet self,
Or pines in sad experience, worse than death,
Or keeps his wing'd affections clipt with crime.
Tennyson's Princess.
Woman! blest partner of our joys and woes!
Even in the darkest hour of earthly ill,
Untarnish'd yet thy fond affection glows,
Throbs with each pulse, and beats with every
thrill!
Bright o'er the waste-l scene thou hoverest still, And well the poet, at her shrine,
Angel of comfort to the failing soul;
Undaunted by the tempest, wild and chill,
That pours its restless and disastrous roll
O'er all that blooms below, with sad and hollow
howl.
Sand's Yamoyden.
A health to sweet woman! the days are no more,
When she watch'd for her lord when the revel
was o'er,
May bend and worship while he woos;
To him she is a thing divine,
The inspiration of his line,
His lov'd one, and his muse.
If to his song the echo rings
If ever from his lyre's proud strings
't is woman's voice he hears;
Flow sounds, like rush of angel wings, —
And sooth'd the white pillow, and blush'd when "T is that she listens while he sings,
As she press'd her cold lips on his forehead of
flame.
Alas, for the lov'd one! too spotless and fair,
The joys of his banquet to chasten and share;
Her eye lost its light, that his goblet might shine,
And the rose on her cheek was dissolv'd in his
wine.
O. W. Holmes.
With blended smiles and tears.
Through suffering and sorrow thou hast pass d,
To show us what a woman true may be.
J R. Lowell.
Maiden, when such a soul as thine is born,
The morning-stars their ancient music make.
J. R. Lowel
But, like dumb statues, or breathless stones,
Star'd on each other, and look'd deadly pale.
Shaks. Richard III.
Behold, our infancies in tales delight,
That bolt like hedgehog-quills the hair upright.
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.
The handsome bar-maids stare, as mute as fishes;
And sallow waiters, frighten'd, drop their dishes!
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.
"Niagara! Wonder of this western world,
And half the world beside! hail beauteous queen
Of cataracts!". an angel who had been
O'er heaven and earth spoke thus.
Words are the life of knowledge; they set free,
And bring forth truth by way of midwif'ry;
The activ'st creatures of the teeming brain,
The judges who the inward man arraign:
Reason's chief engine and artillery
To batter error, and make falsehood fly;
The cannons of the mind, who sometimes bounce
Nothing but war, then peace again pronounce.
James Howel.
Words have wings, and, as soon as their cage,
Mouth, is open'd, out they fly, and mount beyond Our reach and past recovery: like lightning, They can't be stopt, but break their passage
The smallest crannies, and penetrate
Sometimes the thickest walls; their nature's as
Mrs. Maria Brooks. Expansive as the light.
Some know no joy like what a word can raise,
Haul'd through a language's perplexing maze;
Till on a mate that seems t' agree they light,
Like man and wife that still are opposite;
Not lawyers at the bar play more with sense,
When brought to their last trope of eloquence,
Than they on every subject, great or small,
At clubs or councils, at a church or ball;
They cry we rob them of their tributes due;
Alas! how can we laugh and pity too?
Stillingfleet's Essay on Conversation.
Words are the soul's embassadors, who go
Abroad upon her errands to and fro;
They are the sole expounders of the mind,
And correspondence keep 'twixt all mankind.
They are those airy keys that ope (and wrest
Sometimes) the locks and hinges of the breast.
By them the heart makes sallies: wit and sense
Belong to them: they are the quintessence
Of those ideas which the thoughts distil,
And so calcine and melt again, until
They drop forth into accents; in whom lies
The salt of fancy, and all faculties.
'Tis only man can words create,
And cut the air to sounds articulate
By nature's special charter. Nay, speech can
Make a shrewd discrepance 'twixt man and man:
It doth the gentleman from clown discover;
And from a fool the grave philosopher;
As Solon said to one in judgment weak,
thought tree wise until I heard thee speak.
James Houel.
Words lead to things; a scale is more precise,
Coarse speech, bad grammar, swearing, drinking,
Holmes's Urania.
One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt,
One trivial letter ruins all left out;
A knot can choke a felon into clay;
A not will save him, spelt without the k;
The smallest word has some unguarded spot,
And danger lurks in i without a dot.
Shaks. Merchant of Venice
Nature hath fram'd strange fellows in her time:
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,
And laugh, like parrots, at a bag-piper;
And others of such vinegar aspect,
That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile,
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.
Shaks. Merchant of Venice.
I am in this earthly world; where, to do harm, Is often laudable: to do good, sometimes, Accounted dangerous folly.
O, world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast
Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart, Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal, and exer.
Are still together, who twin, as 't were, in love
Unseparable, shall within this hour,
On a dissension of a doit, break out
To bitterest enmity: so fellest foes,
Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep
To take the one the other, by some chance,
Some trick, not worth an egg, shall grow dear
friends,
And interjoin their issues.
Shaks. Coriolanus.
Sweet prince, the untainted virtue of your years
Hath not yet div'd into the world's deceit:
No more can you distinguish of a man
Than of his outward show; which, God he knows,
Seldom, or never, jumpeth with the heart.
Holmes' Poems. How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on 't! oh fie! 't is an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in
nature,
Possess it merely.
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits, and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.
Shaks. As you like it. From whence thou canst derive
Thou seest, we are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.
No good but what thy soul's vexation brings But case thou meet
Some petty-petty sweet,
Each drop is guarded with a thousand stings
Who to the full, thy vileness, world, e'er told!
What is in thee, that's not extremely ill?
A loathsome shop, where poison's only sold,
Whose very entrance instantly doth kill;
Nothing in thee but villany doth dwell,
And all thy ways lead headlong unto hell.
Drayton's Legend of Pierce Gaveston.
This world is like a mint, we are no sooner
Cast into the fire, taken out again,
Hammer'd, stamp'd, and made current, but
Presently we are chang'd.
This world's the chaos of confusion:
No world at all, but mass of open wrongs,
Wherein a man, as in a map, may see
The high road way from woe to misery.
In this grand wheel, the world, we're spokes made all;
But that it may still keep it round,
Some mount while others fall.
Who looks upon this world and not beyond it,
To the abodes it leads to, must believe it
Decker and Webster's Westward Ho. The bloody slaughter-house of some ill pow'r,
Princes for arms, and counsellors for brains,
Lawyers for tongues, divines for hearts, and more,
The rich for stomachs, and for backs the poor;
The officers for hands, merchants for feet,
By which remote and distant countries meet.
Dr. Donne.
They say the world is like a bias-bowl,
And it runs on the rich men's sides: others
Say, 't is like a tennis-ball, and fortune
Keeps such a racket with it, as it tosses
It into time's hazard, and that devours all.
Cupid's Whirligig.
Well hath the great Creator of the world
Fram'd it in that exact and perfect form,
That by itself unmoveable might stand,
Supported only by his providence.
Well hath his powerful wisdom ordered
Thee, in nature, disagreeing elements,
That all affecting their peculiar place,
Maintain the conservation of the whole.
Well hath he taught the swelling ocean
To know his bounds, lest in luxurious pride
He should insult upon the conquer'd land:
Well hath he plac'd those torches in the heav'ns
To give light to our else darken'd eyes:
The crystal windows through which our soul,
Looking upon the world's most beauteous face,
Is blest with sight and knowledge of his works.
Well hath he all things done: for how, alas!
Could any strength or wit of feeble man
Sustained have that greater universe
Too weak an Atlas for one commonwealth?
How could he make the earth, the water, air,
And fire, in peace their duties to observe,
Or bridle up the headstrong ocean,
That cannot rule the wits and tongues of men,
And keep them in. It were impossible
To give light to the world with all his art
And skill, that cannot well illuminate
One darken'd understanding.
Rather than the contrivance of a good one. Crown's Ambitious Statesman.
Oh cursed troubled world! Where nothing without sorrow can be had, And 't is not easy to be good or bad! For horror attends evil,- sorrow good, Vice plagues the mind, and virtue flesh and blood. Crown's Darius. The world is a great dance, in which we find The good and bad have various turns assign'd; But when they've ended the great masquerade, One goes to glory, th' other to a shade.
Crown's Juliana. The world's a wood, in which all lose their way, Though by a different path each goes astray. Buckingham.
The world's a lab'rinth, where unguided men
Walk up and down to find their weariness:
No sooner have we measur'd with much toil
One crooked path, in hope to gain our freedom,
But it betrays us to a new affliction.
Beaumont's Night-Walker.
Where solid pains succeed our senseless joys,
And short-liv'd pleasures pass like fleeting dreams.
Rochester's Valentinian,
There was an ancient sage philosopher,
That had read Alexander Ross over,
And swore the world as he could prove,
Was made of fighting and of love.
It is a pride, alas! to please the world,
Where honest thoughts are a reproach to man,
Where knaves look great, and groaning virtue
starves,
A world of madness, falsehood, and injustice?
Smith's Princess of Parma.
What is this world! Thy school, O misery!
Our only lesson is to learn to suffer:
And he who knows not that, was born for nothing.
Young's Revenge.
How was my heart incrusted by the world!
O how self-fetter'd was my grovelling soul!
How, like a worm, was I wrapt round and round
In silken thought, which reptile fancy span,
Till darken'd reason lay quite clouded o'er
With soft conceit of endless comfort.
Young's Night Thoughts.
The world's a stately bark, on dangerous seas,
With pleasure seen, but boarded at our peril.
Young's Night Thoughts.
The world's infectious; few bring back at eve
Immaculate, the manners of the morn.
Something, we thought, is blotted; we resolv'd,
Is shaken; we renounc'd, returns again.
Young's Night Thoughts. A world where lust of pleasure, grandeur, gold, Three demons that divide its realms between them,
With strokes alternate buffet to and fro
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She boasts a confidence she does not hold;
That conscious of her crimes, she feels instead
A cold misgiving, and a killing dread :
That while in health the ground of her support
Is madly to forget that life is short;
That sick she trembles, knowing she must die,
Her hope presumption, and her faith a lie;
That while she dotes, and dreams that she believes,
She mocks her maker, and herself deceives,
Her utmost reach historical assent,
The doctrines warp'd to what they never meant;
The truth itself is in her head as dull
And useless as a candle in a scull,
Man's restless heart, their sport, their flying ball; And all her love of God a groundless claim,
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A trick upon the canvas, painted flame.
Cowper.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow'd
To its idolatries a patient knee,-
Nor coin'd my cheeks to smiles,-nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and
still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself
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