“I come, I come,”
And a maiden sat in her summer bower,
In the changeful gleam of the twilight hour,
And joy was in her home.

Afar, afar,
From her happy cot, ‘mid the clustering vines,
where the pale moonbeam in silver shines,
She gazed on each bright star.

A gentle prayer
On the low night wind as it murmur’d by,
Like the sound of some passing spirit’s sigh,
She whisper’d softly there.

An icy breath,
A hurrying wing, as of speedy flight,
A darkness shrouding a sunny light,
And the maiden sleeps in death.

“I come, I come,”
And a child with eyes like the sky’s own blue,
Sat playing amid the flowers, and dew,
And peace was in his home.

Loudly, and wild,
A burst of joy thro’ the calm air thrills,
And echo’d by mountains, vales, and hills;
‘Twas the laughter of a child.

Silent, and hush’d,
The air blows chill, and the flowers depart,
And the stream grows still at the child’s glad heart,
And death the blossoms crush’d.

“I come, I come,”
And a worn old man with his locks of gray,
On a bed-rid couch at morning lay,
And quiet fill’d his home.

He dream’d of joy;
And the sunny light of his childhood’s track
To his fading vision came brightly back,
And he dream’d he was a boy.

His eye grew dim,
And a sudden shuddering o’er him crept,
A gentle sigh—and the old man slept,
For death had shrouded him.

“I come, I come,”
It came like the blast of the dread simoom,
A trumpet tone from the hiding tomb,
And a sadness fill’d each home.

The Cry of Death, Catherine H. Waterman

Do not therefore consider this life as an object of any moment. Look back on the immense gulf of time already past; and forwards, to that infinite duration yet to come, and you will find how trifling the difference is between a life of three days and of three ages.

Let us then employ properly this moment of time allotted us by fate, and leave the world contentedly; like a ripe olive dropping from its stalk, speaking well of the soil that produced it, and of the tree that bore it.

It was a very trying day, choked in raw fog to begin with, and now drowned in cold rain. The flickering, blurred flames of gas-lamps seemed to be dissolving in a watery atmosphere. And the lofty pretensions of a mankind oppressed by the miserable indignities of the weather appeared as a colossal and hopeless vanity deserving of scorn, wonder, and compassion.

When the mind or ruling principle is properly regulated, it can with ease and at any time adapt itself to the various events of life, which are presented to it for the subject of its operations. For it is not particularly attached to any one subject or mode of action. It exerts itself with a preference indeed on things more agreeable, but with a reserve of acquiescence; and if chance throw anything of a contrary quality in its way, it takes that for the subject of its philosophy to work upon; which, like a strong fire, converts and assimilates that to its own substance, which would extinguish a slight flame, triumphs over all resistance, and becomes more brilliant by this addition of combustible matter.

With such deceits he gain’d their easy hearts,
Too prone to credit his perfidious arts.
What Diomede, nor Thetis’ greater son,
A thousand ships, nor ten years’ siege, had done—
False tears and fawning words the city won.

Truth, Sir, is a profound Sea, and few there be that dare wade deep enough to find out the bottom on’t. Besides, Sir, I’m afraid the Line of your Understanding mayn’t be long enough.

They have also ascribed divinity, and built temples to mere accidents and qualities, such as are time, night, day, peace, concord, love, contention, virtue, honour, health, rust, fever, and the like; which when they prayed for or against they prayed to, as if there were ghosts of those names hanging over their heads, and letting fall or withholding that good or evil for or against which they prayed. They invoked also their own wit by the name of Muses, their own ignorance by the name of Fortune, their own lust by the name of Cupid, their own rage by the name of Furies, their own privy members by the name of Priapus; and attributed their pollutions to Incubi and Succubæ: insomuch as there was nothing which a poet could introduce as a person in his poem which they did not make either a god or a devil.

‘Tis one thing to copy, and another thing to imitate from nature. The copier is that servile imitator, to whom Horace gives no better name than that of animal; he will not so much as allow him to be a man. Raphael imitated nature; they who copy one of Raphael’s pieces, imitate but him, for his work is their original. They translate him, as I do Virgil; and fall as short of him, as I of Virgil. There is a kind of invention in the imitation of Raphael: for though the thing was in nature, yet the idea of it was his own. Ulysses travel’d, so did Aeneas; but neither of them were the first travelers: for Cain went into the land of Nod, before they were born: and neither of the poets ever heard of such a man. If Ulysses had been kill’d at Troy, yet Aeneas must have gone to sea, or he could never have arrived in Italy. But the designs of the two poets were as different as the courses of their heroes, one went home, and the other sought a home. To return to my first similitude. Suppose Apelles and Raphael had each of them painted a burning Troy; might not the modern painter have succeeded as well as the ancient, though neither of them had seen the town on fire? for the draughts of both were taken from the ideas which they had of nature. Cities had been burnt before either of them were in being.

There are surely other worlds than this: other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude, other speculations than the speculations of the sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies?

As for the herd of mankind, he [i.e. the rational man] is too well acquainted with their conduct with their conduct both in private and in public; their infamous connections, the dissipation of their days and the revels of their nights. He cannot therefore be very ambitious of the praise or approbation of such capricious people, who are often at a loss to please themselves.

Out of nothing, nothing can be brought;
And that which is, can ne’er be turned to naught.

Or if we do applaud, honour and admire, quota pars, how small a part, in respect of the whole world, never so much as hears our names! how few take notice of us! how slender a tract, as scant as Alcibiades his land in a map! And yet every man must and will be immortal, as he hopes, and extend his fame to our antipodes, whenas half, no, not a quarter, of his own province or city neither knows nor hears of him: but say they did, what’s a city to a kingdom, a kingdom to Europe, Europe to the world, the world itself that must have an end, if compared to the least visible star in the firmament, eighteen times bigger than it? and then if those stars be infinite, and every star there be a sun, as some will, and, as this sun of ours, hath his planets about him, all inhabited, what proportion bear we to them, and where’s our glory?

Initium caecitas, progressus labor, exitus dolor, error omnia. [Blindness at the beginning, labor in the middle, grief at the end, error in all.]

Of all my seeking this is all my gain:
No agony of any mortal brain
   Shall wrest the secret of the life of man;
The Search has taught me that the Search is vain.

Yet sometimes on a sudden all seems clear—
Hush! hush! my soul, the Secret draweth near;
   Make silence ready for the speech divine—
If Heaven should speak, and there be none to hear!

Yea! sometimes on the instant all seems plain,
The simple sun could tell us, or the rain;
   The world, caught dreaming with a look of heaven,
Seems on a sudden tip-toe to explain.

Like to a maid who exquisitely turns
A promising face to him who, waiting, burns
   In hell to hear her answer— so the world
Tricks all, and hints what no man ever learns.

Now, if a Muse cannot run when she is unfetter’d, ‘tis a sign she has but little speed.

Thus rag’d the goddess; and, with fury fraught,
The restless regions of the storms she sought,
Where, in a spacious cave of living stone,
The tyrant Æolus, from his airy throne,
With pow’r imperial curbs the struggling winds,
And sounding tempests in dark prisons binds.

I hate to see prudence clinging to the green suckers of youth; ‘tis like ivy round a sapling, and spoils the growth of the tree.

A wanton eye, a liquorish tongue, and a gamesome hand.

Many men neglect the tumults of the world, and care not for glory, and yet they are afraid of infamy, repulse, disgrace; they can severely contemn pleasure, bear grief indifferently, but they are quite battered and broken with reproach and obloquy (siqueidem vita et fama pari passu ambulant [seeing that life goes hand in hand with repute]), and are so dejected many times for some public injury, disgrace, as a box on the ear by their inferior, to be overcome of their adversary, foiled in the field, to be out in a speech, some foul act committed or disclosed, etc., that they dare not come abroad all their lives after, but melancholize in corners, and keep in holes.

…A mere madness, to live like a wretch, and die rich.

Horner: But I did not expect marriage from such a whoremaster as you; one that knew the town so much, and women so well.

Pinchwife: Why, I have married no London wife.

Horner: Pshaw! that’s all one. That grave circumspection in marrying a country wife, is like refusing a deceitful pampered Smithfield jade, to go and be cheated by a friend in the country.

Pinchwife: [Aside.] A pox on him and his simile!

The freedom of thought and speech arising from, and privileged by, our constitution, gives a force and poignancy to the expressions of our common people, not to be found under arbitrary governments where the ebullitions of vulgar wit are checked by the fear of the bastinado, or of a lodging during pleasure in some gaol or castle.

Horner: Nay, madam, rather than they shall prejudice your honour, I’ll prejudice theirs; and, to serve you, I’ll lie with ‘em all, make the secret their own, and then they’ll keep it. I am a Machiavel in love, madam.

Lady Fidget: Oh, no, sir, not that way.

Horner: Nay, the devil take me, if censorious women are to be silenced any other way.

For, impartially speaking, the French are as much better critics than the English, as they are worse poets. Thus we generally allow that they better understand the management of a war than our islanders; but we know we are superior to them in the day of battle. They value themselves on their generals, we on our soldiers. But this is not the proper place to decide that question, if they make it one.

Horner: Doctor, there are quacks in love as well as physic, who get but the fewer and worse patients for their boasting; a good name is seldom got by giving it one’s self; and women, no more than honour, are compassed by bragging. Come, come, Doctor, the wisest lawyer never discovers the merits of his cause till the trial; the wealthiest man conceals his riches, and the cunning gamester his play. Shy huspands and keepers, like old rooks, are not to be cheated by a new unpractised trick: false friendship will pass now no more than false dice upon ‘em; no, not in the city.