OH, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth!
Then with a passion assion I would shake the world,
And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy,
Which cannot hear a feeble lady's voice.
They brought one Pinch, a hungry, lean-faced villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,
A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller,
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man.
Hence, when anatomists discourse,
How like brute organs are to ours;
They grant, if higher powers think fit,
A bear might soon be made a wit;
And that, for anything in nature,
Pigs might squeak love odes, dogs bark satire.
BOAST not these titles of your ancestors,
Brave youths; they're their possessions, not your own:
When your own virtues equall'd have their names,
'Twill be but fair to lean upon their fames,
For they are strong supporters; but, till then
The greatest are but growing gentlemen.
I have no urns, no dusty monuments;
No broken images of ancestors,
Wanting an ear or nose; no forged tables
Of long descents, to boast false honours from.
Obscure! why prithee what am I? I knew
My father, grandsire, and great grandsire, too;
If further I derive my pedigree,
I can but guess beyond the fourth degree,
The rest of my forgotten ancestors
Were sons of earth.
It is, indeed, a blessing, when the virtues
Of noble races are hereditary;
And do derive themselves from th' imitation
Of virtuous ancestors.
They that on glorious ancestors enlarge,
Produce their debt, instead of their discharge.
"Your ancient house?" No more: I cannot see
The wondrous merits of a edigree:
- Nor of a proud display
Of smoky ancestors in wax and clay.
How oft do they their silver bowers leave,
To come to succour us that succour want?
How oft do they with golden pinions cleave
The flitting skies, like fiying pursuivant,
Against foul fiends to aid us militant?
They for us fight, they watch and duly ward,
And their bright squadrons round about us plant;
And all for love, and nothing for reward:
Oh! why should heavenly love to man have such regard.
Spenser.
Thou hast the sweetest face I ever looked on;
For, as I have a soul, she is an angel.
Thus they in heaven, above the starry sphere,
Their happy hours in joy and hymning spent.--Milton.
Angels, contented with their fame in heaven,
Seek not the praise of men.
My fancy formed thee of angelic kind,
Some emanation of the all-beauteous mind. Pope.
Are ye for ever to your skies departed?
Oh! will ye visit this dim world no more? Ye whose bright wings a solemn splendour darted Through Eden's fresh and flowery shades of yore? Mrs. Hemans.
It is a beautiful, a blessed belief,
That the beloved dead, grown angels, watch
The dear ones left behind.
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.
Is blood, pour'd and perplex'd into a froth;
But malice is the wisdom of our wrath.
Sir W. Davenant.
Anger is like
A full hot horse, who being allowed his way,
Self-mettle tires him.
Give him no breath, but now
Make boot of his distraction: never anger
Made good guard for itself.
Anger's my meat; I sup upon myself,
And so shall starve with feeding
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.
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 and blows,
Itself discharges on our foes.
Madness and anger differ but in this,
This is short madness, that long anger is.
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.
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.
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.
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.
THE pleasant'st angling 'tis to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait.
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.
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.
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.
And angling too, that solitary vice,
Whatever Izaak Walton sings or says.
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