WHILE lions war, and battle for their dens,
Poor harmless lambs abide their enmity.
Others may use the ocean for a road,
Only the English make it their abode;
Whose ready sails with every wind can fly,
And make a cov'nant with th' unconstant sky.
The woodcock's early visit and abode,
For long continuance in our temp'rate clime,
Fortell a liberal harvest.
Where, tell me where
Is the abode of care?
Everywhere she abideth:
None from her can run,
There's no breast, not one,
But therein she glideth.
Where, tell me where
'Bides no earthly care?
In the realms supernal!
Are you on the road
To that blest abode
Of happiness eternal?
That true agapemoné,
Such as here can never be?
THE rarer thy example stands
By how much from the top of wond'rous glory;
Strongest of mortal men,
To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fall'n.
Rivers from bubbling springs
Have rise at first, and great from abject things.
Middleton.
The rapine is so abject and profane,
They not from trifles, nor from gods refrain.
Dryden, from Juvenal.
To what base ends, and by what abject ways
Are mortals urged through sacred lust of praise.
How past expression, abject is the man
Who at the feet of power bows down, to kiss
The golden toe that's offered for his homage;
Who lies, and flatters, and forswears himself,
For such rewards as tyrants can bestow:
Though clothed in purple, faring sumptuously,
No beggar clad in rags, with but a crust,
Is half so abject, and so mean as he.
ABRIDGE-ABRIDGMENT.
I HAVE disabled mine estate,
By showing something a more swelling port,
Than my faint means would grant continuance;
Nor do I now make moan to be abridged
From such a noble rate.
All trying, by a love of littleness,
To make abridgments, and to draw to less
Even that nothing which at first we were.
Many there be that do abridge their lives,
By self-neglect, or vile indulgences,
And so their proper course of usefulness
Is shortened, and their fellow-creatures suffer
By such abridgment.
LIKE as the culver on the bared bough,
Sits mourning for the absence of her mate,
And in her songs sends many a wishful vow
For his return that seems to linger late;
So I, alone now left, disconsolate,
Mourn to myself the absence of my love;
And wandering here and there all desolate,
Seek, with my plaints, to match that mournful dove.
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, What cold December barrenness everywhere.
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing;
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew. Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermillion in the rose: They were but sweet, but figures of delight, Drawn after you; you pattern of all those, Yet seemed it winter still, and you away, As with your shadow I with these did play. Shakspere. What! keep a week away? Seven days and nights? Eight score eight hours? and lover's absent hours, More tedious than the dial eight score times? O weary reckoning!
Though absent, present in desires they be;
Our souls much further than our eyes can see.
Without your sight my life is less secure;
Those wounds you gave, your eyes can only cure;
No balm in absence will effectual prove,
Nature provides no weapon-salve for love.
Sir Robert Howard.
Thus absence dies, and dying proves
No absence can subsist with loves
That do partake of fair perfection;
Since, in the darkest night, they may,
By love's quick motion, find a way
To see each other in reflection.
Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; And every little absence is an age.
All flowers will droop in absence of the sun
That waked their sweets.
His friends beheld and pitied him in vain,
For what advice can ease a lover's pain?
Absence, the best expedient they could find,
Might save the fortune, if not spare the mind.
Though I am forced thus to absent myself
From all I love, I shall contrive some means,
Some friendly intervals to visit thee.
Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more.—Pope.
In spring the fields, in autumn hills I rove;
At morn the plains, at noon the shady grove;
But Delia, always absent from her sight,
Nor plains at morn, nor groves at noon delight.
Methinks I see thee straying on the beach,
And asking of the surge that bathes thy foot
If ever it has washed our distant shore.
What tender strains of passion can impart
The pangs of absence to an amorous heart?
Far, far too faint the powers of language prove,
Language, that slow interpreter of love!
Souls paired like ours, like ours to union wrought,
Converse by silent sympathy of thought.-Pattison.
I'm from thy sight, the heart within my bosom
Moans like a tender infant in its cradle,
Whose nurse had left it.
Of day or dreaming night but I am with thee;
There's not a wind but whispers of thy name,
And not a flower that sleeps beneath the moon,
But in its hues and fragrance, tells a tale
Of thee.
Short absence hurt him more,
And made his wound far greater than before;
Absence not long enough to root out quite
All love, increases love at second sight.-Thomas May.
The limner's art may trace the absent feature,
And give the eye of distant weeping faith
To view the form of its idolatry;
But oh! the scenes 'mid which they met and parted,
The thoughts-the recollections sweet and bitter,
Tn' Elysian dreams of lovers, when they loved,
Who shall restore them?
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Think'st thou that I could bear to part
From thee, and learn to halve my heart;
Years have not seen, time shall not see,
The hour that tears my soul from thee.
We must part awhile;
A few short months--tho' short, they will be long
Without thy dear society: but yet
We must endure it, and our love will be
The fonder after parting-it will grow
Intenser in our absence, and again
Burn with a tender glow when I return.
Oh Absence! by thy stern decree,
How many a heart, once light and free,
Is filled with doubts and fears!
Thy days like tedious weeks do seem,
Thy weeks slow-moving months we deem,
Thy months, long-lingering years.
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