74

AVENGE.

AWKWARDNESS.

AVENGE.

ALL those great battles which thou boasts to win Through strife and bloodshed, and avengement, Now praised, hereafter thou shalt repent.

Till Jove, no longer patient, took his time,
To avenge with thunder your audacious crime.

Ere this he had returned with fury driven
By his avengers; since no place like this
Can fit his punishment nor their revenge.

But just disease to luxury succeeds,
And every death its own avenger breeds.

Spenser.

Dryden.

A wrong avenged is doubly perpetrated,
Two sinners stand where lately stood but one.

Milton.

Pope.

AWKWARDNESS.

T. Mc Kellar.

WHAT'S a fine person, or a beauteous face,
Unless deportment gives them decent grace?
Bless'd with all other requisites to please,
Some want the striking elegance of ease,
The curious eye their awkward movement tires,
They seem like puppets led about by wires.

Awkward, embarrass'd, stiff, without the skill
Of moving gracefully, or standing still,
One leg, as if suspicious of his brother,
Desirous seems to run away from t'other.-Churchill.

Not all the pumice of the polished town
Can smooth the roughness of the barn-yard clown;
Rich, honour'd, titled, he betrays his race
By this one mark-he's awkward in his face.

O. W. Holmes.

THUS, like a sailor by the tempest hurl'd
Ashore, the babe is shipwrecked on the world;
Naked he is, and ready to expire,
Helpless of all that human wants require;
Exposed upon inhospitable earth,
From the first moment of his hapless birth;
Straight with foreboding cries he fills the room,
Too sure presages of his future doom.

Dryden, from Lucretius.

The babe had all that infant care beguiles
And early knew his mother in her smiles.--Dryden.

A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love;

A resting-place for innocence on earth, a link between

angels and men;

Yet is it a talent of trust, a loan to be rendered

back with interest;

A delight, but redolent with care; honey sweet, but

lacking not the bitter.

For character groweth day by day, and all things aid

it in unfolding;

And the bent unto good or evil may be given in the

hours of infancy.

BAIT.

M. F. Tupper.

AND that same glorious beauty's idle boast,
Is but a bait, such wretches to beguile.

What so strong,

But wanting rest will also want of might?
The sun, that measures heaven all day long,

Spenser.

At night doth bait his steeds the ocean waves among.

Spenser.

Oh, cunning enemy! that to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on

To sin in loving virtue.

Shakspere.

Accounting woman's beauties sugared baits,
Which never catch but fools with their deceits.

Wm. Browne.

But our desires, tyrannical extortion
Doth force us there to set our chief delightfulness,
Where but a baiting-place is all our portion.

Sir P. Sidney.

Fruit like that

Which grew in paradise, the bait of Eve,
Used by the tempter.

Milton.

Sweet words I grant, baits and allurements sweet,
But greatest hopes of greatest crosses meet.

Fairfax.

How are the sex improved in amorous arts!
What new found snares they bait for human hearts!

BALM.-BALMY.

Prior.

Он, balmy breath! that dost almost persuade
Justice to break her sword.

Shakspere.

Those rich perfumes which from the happy shore, The winds upon their balmy wings conveyed, • Whose gentle sweetness first the world betrayed.

Dryden.

Would'st thou from sorrow find a sweet relief,
Or is thy heart oppressed with woe untold?
Balm would'st thou gather for corroding grief?
Pour blessings round thee like a shower of gold.
Charles Wilcox.

In the breath of morn is balm,
Balmy are the dews of even;
In the stillness and the calm,
Balm for human woe is given.

H. G. A. BANISHΜΕΝΤ.

BANISHΜΕΝΤ.

BANISH'D! the damned use that word in hell;
Howlings attend it; how, hast thou the heart
To mangle me with that word-banishment?

77

Shakspere.

We banish you our territories;
You, cousin Hereford, on pain of death;
Till twice five summers have enriched our fields,
Shall not revisit our fair dominions,

But tread the stranger paths of banishment.

Shakspere.

Flies may do this, when I from this must fly;
They are free men, but I am banished.

Shakspere.

I've stoopt my neck under your injuries,
And sigh'd my English breath in foreign lands,
Eating the bitter bread of banishment;
While you have fed upon my signories;
Disparked my parks, and felled my forest woods;
From mine own windows torn my household-coat,
Razed out my impress; leaving me no sign,
Save men's opinions, and my living blood,
To show the world I am a gentleman.

Banish me!

Banish your dotage; banish usury,
That makes the senate ugly.

Shakspere.

Shakspere.

Round the wide world in banishment we roam,
Forced from our pleasing fields and native home.

Dryden.

Successless all her soft caresses prove,
To banish from his breast his country's love. --Pope.

'Tis not absence to be far,

But to abhor is to absent;

To those who in disfavour are,

Sight itself is banishment.

From the Spanish of Mendoza.

78

BANK. BARD.

BANK-BANKERS.

By powerful charms of gold and silver led,
The Lombard bankers and the change to waste.

Whole droves of lenders crowd the banker's doors To call in money.

Dryden.

'Tis happy when our streams of knowledge flow To fill their banks, but not to overflow.

Denham.

The bold encroaches on the deep,
Gain by degrees huge tracts of land;
Till Neptune, with one general sweep,
Turns all again to barren strand.
The multitude's capricious pranks
Are said to represent the seas;
Which breaking bankers and the banks,
Rescue their own whene'er they please.

We want our money on the nail,

The banker's ruined if he pays;
They seem to act the ancient tale,
The birds are met to strip the jays.
So powerful are a banker's bills

Where creditors demand their due;
They break up counters, doors, and tills,
And leave the empty chests in view.

BARD.

AND many bards, that to the trembling chord
Can tune their timely voices cunningly.

Swift.

Swift.

Spenser.

The hard who first adorn'd our native tongue,
Tuned to the British lyre this ancient song,
Which Homer might without a blush rehearse.

On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,

Dryden.