Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

It is a beautiful, a blessed belief,
That the beloved dead, grown angels, watch
The dear ones left behind.
Miss Landon.

How sweet it were, if without feeble fright,
Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight,
An angel came to us, and we could bear
To see him issue from the silent air

At evening in our room, and bend on ours
His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers
News of dear friends, and children who have never
Been dead indeed; as we shall know for ever.
Alas! we think not that we daily see
About our hearths-angels that are to be,
Or may be if they will, and we prepare
Their souls and ours to meet in happy air,-
A child, a friend, a wife, whose soft heart sings
In unison with ours, brooding its future wings.
Leigh Hunt.

ANGER.

ANGER

Is blood, pour'd and perplex'd into a froth;
But malice is the wisdom of our wrath.

Sir W. Davenant.

Anger is like

Shakspere.

A full hot horse, who being allowed his way,

Give him no breath, but now

Self-mettle tires him.

Make boot of his distraction: never anger

Made good guard for itself.

Shakspere.

Anger's my meat; I sup upon myself,

And so shall starve with feeding.

Shakspere.

What sudden anger's this? how have I reaped it?

He parted frowning from me, as if ruin

Leaped from his eyes. So looks the chafed lion
Upon the daring huntsman that has galled him;
Then makes him nothing.

Shakspere.

[blocks in formation]

Be calm in arguing; for fierceness makes
Error a fault, and truth discourtesy:
Why should I feel another man's mistakes,
More than his sickness or his poverty?
In love I should, but anger is not love,
Nor wisdom either; therefore gently move.-Herbert.

Anger in hasty words or blows,
Itself discharges on our foes.

Madness and anger differ but in this,
This is short madness, that long anger is.

Waller.

Charles Alleyn.

Where there's

Power to punish, 'tis tyranny to rage;
Anger is no attribute of justice;

'Tis true she's painted with a sword, but looks
As if she held it not; though war be in

Her hand, yet peace dwells in her face.

Henry Killigrew.

When anger rushes unrestrain❜d to action,
Like a hot steed it stumbles in its way:

The man of thought strikes deepest, and strikes safest.

Savage.

Next Anger rushed, his eyes on fire,

In lightnings owned his secret stings,

In one rude clash he struck the lyre,

And swept with hurried hands the strings.

Collins.

Go to the bee! and thence bring home,

(Worth all the treasures of her comb,) An antidote against rash strife:

She, when her angry flight she wings,
But once, and at her peril stings;
But gathers honey all her life.

The ocean lashed to fury loud,

Its high waves mingling with the cloud,
Is peaceful sweet serenity

To anger's dark and troubled sea.

Bishop.

J. W. Eastburn.

ANGLING.

THE pleasant'st angling 'tis to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait.

Shakspere.

Give me mine angle; we'll to the river there,
My music playing far off, I will betray
Tawny-finned fish; my bended hooks shall pierce
Their slimy jaws.
Shakspere.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with sticks and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset

With strangling snares or windowy net;
Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish.in banks outwrest;
Let curious traitors sleeve silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes' wandering eyes;
For thee thou need'st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait;
That fish that is not catched thereby,
Alas! is wiser far than I.

Donne.

In genial spring, beneath the quiv'ring shade,
Where cooling vapours breathe along the mead,
The patient fisher takes his silent stand,
Intent, his angle trembling in his hand:

With looks unmoved, he lures the scaly breed,
And eyes the dancing cork, and bending reed.-Pope.

He, like a patient angler, ere he struck,
Would let them play awhile upon his hook.-Dryden.

I in these flowery meads would be;
These crystal streams should solace me;
To whose harmonious, bubbling noise

I with my angle would rejoice.-Izaak Walton.

And angling too, that solitary vice,

Whatever Izaak Walton sings or says. Byron.

44

ANIMALS.

ANNOYANCE.

ANIMALS-ANIMATE.

NOBLER birth

Of creatures animate with gradual life,

Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in man.

Let cavillers deny

Milton.

That brutes have reason; sure 't is something more,
'Tis Heaven directs, and stratagem inspires,
Beyond the short extent of human thought.

The heart is hard in nature, and unfit
For human fellowship, as being void
Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike

Somerville.

To love and friendship both, that is not pleased
With sight of animals enjoying life,

Nor feels their happiness augment his own.-Cowper.

Though man, as God's own miniature, reveals
The grace of beauty and the glow of soul,
And Deity be chartered on his brow,
The brutes and plumy pilgrims of the air,
The insect tribe, and all the scaly troop
That wing their rapid way, proclaim a GOD!
Behold the lion bounding from his den
With red and rolling eye! or hear the bear
While grimly glancing o'er the ice-clad waste,
Loading the wind with his tremendous howl!
Or see leviathan uproot the deep,

And lash the ocean into storms! or mark
The kingly eagle pierce the cope of heaven,
And shiver the contending clouds! Great God!
These give to mortal eyes a glimpse of Thee!
Robert Montgomery.

ANNOYANCE.

As he who long in populous cities pent,
Where houses thick, and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe
Amongst the pleasant villages and farms

Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight.

Milton.

The things we fear bring less annoy
Than fear; and hope brings greater joy.

What then remains last after past annoy,
To take the good vicissitude of joy.

Donne.

Dryden.

Woe to poor man! each outward thing annoys him;
He heaps on inward grief what most destroys him.

With thy clear keen joyance
Sadness cannot be;

Shadow of annoyance

Sidney.

Never came near thee.-Shelley, to the Lark.

ANTIC.

WITHIN the hollow crown,

That rounds the mortal temples of a king,

Death keeps his court; and there the antic sits,

Scoffing his state.

What! dares the slave

Come hither covered with an antic face,
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?

Shakspere.

Shakspere.

Scrambling, out facing, fashion-mongering boys, That lie, and cog, and flout, deprave and slander, Go anticly, and shew an outward hideousness, And speak of half-a-dozen dangerous words.

A work of rich entail, and curious mould,
Woven with antics, and wild imagery.

Of all our antic sights and pageantry,

Shakspere.

Spenser.

Which English idiots run in crowds to see.-Dryden.

For even at first reflection she espies
Such toys, such antics, and such vanities,

That she retires, and shrinks for shame and fear.

Davies.

« AnteriorContinuar »