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Tho' the fair rose with beauteous blush is crown'd,
Beneath her fragrant leaves the thorn is found;
The peach, that with inviting crimson blooms,
Deep at the heart the cank'ring worm consumes.

Time! thou vicegerent of eternity,

Gay.

Thou tyrant over all-sky, earth, and sea;
Relentless, each thou crushest in its hour,
Man, and his works, brute, blushing fruit and flower,
To feed earth's lord omnipotent, the worm.

T. L. Merritt
What is life? like a flower, with the bane in its bosom,
To-day full of promise, to-morrow it dies.
And health? like a dew-drop, that, hung in its blossom,
Survives but a night, and exhales to the skies.
For oft, in the bud that is brightest and fairest,
The seeds of the canker in embryo lurk;

And oft at the root of the flower that is rarest,
Secure in its ambush, the worm is at work.

William Beatte.

WORSHIP.

-THUS, Indian like,

Religious in mine error, I adore

The sun, that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more!

Shakspee.

First worship God! he that forgets to pray,
Bids not himself good-morrow, nor good-day.

Randolph.

For look again on the past years;-behold,
Flown, like the nightmare's hideous shapes, awa,
Full many a horrible worship, that of old,
Held, o'er the shuddering realms, unquestioned swg.
W. C. Bryat.

WORTH-WORTHINESS.

HE is not worthy of the honey-comb,

That shuns the hive because the bees have stings.
Shakspere.

Nor are we ignorant how noble minds
Suffer too much through those indignities
Which times and vicious persons cast on them.
Ourself have ever vowed to esteem

As virtue for itself, so fortune, base;

Who's first in worth, the same be first in place.
Ben Jonson.
Honour and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
Fortune in men has some small difference made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.
"What differ more," you cry, "than crown and cowl,"
I'll tell you friend!- -a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,

Worth makes the man, the want of it the fellow,
The rest is all but leather and prunella.

Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,

That sense and worth o'er a' the earth,
May hear the gree and a' that,

For a' that, and a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,

That man to man, the wide world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.

Pope.

Burns.

Firm and resolved by sterling worth to gain
Love and respect, thou shalt not strive in vain.

Sir E. Brydges.

Oh, that simplicity and innocence,
Its own unvalued worth so seldom knows!

Shelley, from Goethe.

I know transplanted human worth,
Will bloom to profit otherwhere.

Tennyson.

698

WRATH.

WREATH.

WRATH.

FULL many mischiefs follow cruel wrath;
Abhorred bloodshed, and tumultuous strife,
Unmanly murder, and unthrifty scathe,
Bitter despite, with rancour's rusty knife,
And fretting grief-the enemy of life.

Spenser.

At this the knight grew high in wrath,
And lifting hands and eyes up both,
Three times he smote on stomach stout,
From whence at length these words broke out.

Alas! they had been friends in youth,

But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above,
And life is thorny, and youth is vain;

And to be wrath with one we love,
Doth work like madness on the brain.

Butler.

Coleridge.

WREATH.

I SENT thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee,
As giving it a hope that there
It could not wither'd be.

But thou thereon didst only breathe,

And send'st it back to me,

Since then it grows, and smells I swear,

Not of itself but thee.

Ben Jonson.

The pride of every grove I chose,
The violet sweet and lily fair,
The dappled pink and blushing rose,
To deck my charming Chloe's hair.
At morn_the_nymph vouchsafed to place
Upon her brow the various wreath;
The flowers less blooming than her face,
The scent less fragrant than her breath.

Prior.

WRETCHEDNESS.

POOR naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm!
How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?

Shakspere.

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

In a close lane, as I pursued my journey,
I spied a wrinkled hag with age grown double,
Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself;
Her eyes with scalding rheum were galled and red,
Cold palsy shook her head, her hands seemed withered;
And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapt
The tattered remnant of an old striped hanging,
Which served to keep her carcass from the cold;
So there was nothing of a piece about her.
Her lower weeds were all o'er coarsely patched
With different-coloured rags-black, white, yellow,
And seemed to speak variety of wretchedness.-Otway.

WRINKLE.

GIVE me that glass, and therein will I read;
No deeper wrinkles yet! Hath sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine,
And made no deeper wounds?

Shakspere.

What grudge and grief our joys may then suppress,
To see our hairs which yellow were as gold,
Now grey as glass; to feel and find them less;
To scrape the bald skull which was wont to hold
Our lovely locks, with curling sticks controll'd;
To look in glass, and spy Sir Wrinkle's chair
Set fast on fronts which erst were sleek and fair.
Gascoigne.
Fled are the charms that graced that ivory brow,
Where smiled a dimple, gapes a wrinkle now.
Robert T. Pain.

700

WRITE.

WRITE-WRITERS.

SOUND judgment is the ground of writing well,
And when philosophy directs your choice,
To proper subjects rightly understood,
Words from the pen will naturally flow.

Roscommon, from Horace.
The readers and the hearers like my books,
But yet some writers cannot them digest;
But what care I? for when I make a feast,
I would my guests should praise it, not the cooks.
Sir John Harrington.

'Tis the way of writing at which offence is taken,
And this is the misfortune of an author,
That unless some are angry with him, none are pleased;
Which puts him under this dilemma,

That he must either ruin himself or his printer.

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Or makes a feast, more certainly invites
His judges than his friends; there's not a guest
But will find something wanting, or ill drest.

Sir R. Howard.

Some write confined by physic; some, by debt;
Some, for 'tis Sunday; some, because 't is wet;
Another writes because his father writ,
And proves himself a bastard by his wit.

Young.

Happy within whose honest breast concealed,
There lives a faith, no word may surer make!
Yet still a parchment, written, stamped, and sealed,
A spectre is before which all must quake,

Commit but once thy word to the goose feather,
Then must thou yield the sway to wax and leather.
Shelley, from Goethe.

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