His days and times are passed, Has smit my credit. My father's promise ties me not to time; Shakspere. And bonds, without a date, they say are void. Then raise Dryden. From the conflagrant mass purged and refined, Could the declining of this fate, O friend, DAWN. Milton. Denham. I HAVE been troubled in my sleep this night, Shakspere. While we behold such dauntless worth appear Dryden. Thy hand strikes out some free design, The waking dawn, When night-fallen dews, by day's warm courtship won, The dew-bent primrose kissed the breeze-swept ground. Soft as a bride, the rosy dawn From dewy sleep doth rise, Aaron Hill. And, bathed in blushes, hath withdrawn The mantle from her eyes; The blue-pavilioned skies. -Mrs. A. B. Welby. NIGHT'S swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger; At whose approach, ghosts wand'ring here and there, Troop home to church-yards. Shakspere. Of night impatient we demand the day; Life is a trifle we must shortly pay, And where's the mighty lucre of a day?-Young. Life's buzzing sounds and flattering colours play Blest power of sunshine! genial day! For man to leave it for the gloom, Watts. The deep cold shadow of the tomb. Moore. The spirit of the day is still awake, Its white and holy wings above the peaceful lands. 'T Is the only discipline we are born for; Gather the rose-buds while ye may, Massinger. And that same flower that blooms to-day, To-morrow shall be dying. Death, grim death, Will fold me in his leaden arms, and press Herrick. Congreve. O death, all eloquent! you only prove Pope. A death-bed 's the detector of the heart: Young. How shocking must thy summons be, O Death! Blair. Man, art thou great or vile? Die, and thou shalt know! From the Italian of Alfieri. Death, when unmasked, shows us a friendly, face, Can storied urn, or animated bust Goldsmith. Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust, By no means run in debt. Take thine own measure. The curious unthrift makes his clothes too wide; There died my father, no man's debtor; G. Herbert. Pope. To this great loss a sea of tears is due; If he his ample palm Philips. DECAY. For all, that in this world is great and gay, The monarch oak Three centuries grows, and three he stays Each may feel increases and decays, Taught half by reason, half by mere decay, Spenser. Dryden. * Pope. And those decays, to speak the naked truth, Through the defects of age, were crimes of youth. A blighted trunk upon a cursed root, Denham. Byron. DECEIT. DECENCY. DECEIT DECEPTION. 233 WHAT man so wise, what earthly wit so ware, The guiltless man with guile to entertain?-Spenser. Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, And be you blithe and bonny, Shakspere. The lovely young Lavinia once had friends, O, what a tangled web we weave, Scott. DECENCY. THOSE thousand decencies, that daily flow Milton. And must I own, she said, my secret smart? Dryden. She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought, Immodest words admit of no defence, Pope. Roscommon. |