LIKE as the culver on the bared bough, Sits mourning for the absence of her mate, And in her songs sends many a wishful vow For his return that seems to linger late; So I, alone now left, disconsolate, Mourn to myself the absence of my love; And wandering here and there all desolate, Seek, with my plaints, to match that mournful dove. Edmund Spenser.
Though absent, present in desires they be; Our souls much further than our eyes can sec. Michael Drayton. Our two souls, therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion; Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; The soul, the fixt foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if th' other do. And though it in the centre sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run: Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.
It is as if a night should shade noon-day, Or that the sun was here, but forced away; And we were left, under that hemisphere, Where we must feel it dark for half a year.
Short absence hurt him more, And made his wound far greater than before; Absence not long enough to root out quite All love, increases love at second sight.
Thomas May's Henry II.
I do not doubt his love, but I could wish His presence might confirm it: when I see A fire well fed, shoot up its wanton flame, And dart itself into the face of heaven; I grant that fire, without a fresh supply, May for a while be still a fire; but yet How doth its lustre languish, and itself Grow dark, if it too long want the embrace Of its loved pyle! how straight it buried lies In its own ruins!
Robert Mead's Comfort of Love and Friendship If she be gone, the world, in my esteem, Is all bare walls; nothing remains in it But dust and feathers.
John Crown's Ambitious Statesman. O thou that dost inhabit in my breast, Leave not the mansion so long tenantless; Lest, growing ruinous, the building fall, And leave no memory of what it was! Repair me with thy presence, Sylvia; Thou gentle nymph, cherish thy forlorn swain. Shakspeare's Two Gent. of Verona What! keep a week away? Seven days and nights?
Eight score eight hours? and lovers' absent hours, More tedious than the dial eight score times? O weary reckoning!
How sweet it is to tell the list'ning night Pope's Eloisa. The name beloved. It is a spell of power To wake the buried slumberers of the heart, Where memory lingers o'er the grave of passion Watching its tranced sleep.
Unequal task! a passion to resign, For hearts so touch'd, so pierced, so lost as mine! Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state, How often must it love, how often hate, How often hope, despair, resent, regret, Conceal, disdain-do all things but forget!
Pope's Eloisa. There's not an hour Of day or dreaming night but I am with thee: There's not a wind but whispers of thy name, And not a flower that sleeps beneath the moon But in its hues or fragrance tells a tale Of thee.
Proctor's Mirandola. Methinks I see thee straying on the beach, And asking of the surge that bathes thy foot If ever it has wash'd our distant shore.
The thoughts of other days are rushing on me, The loved, the lost,-the distant, and the dead, Are with me now, and I will mingle with them Till my sense fails, and my raised heart is wrapt In secret suspension of mortality.
Suckling her babe, her only one, look out The way he went at parting,-but he came not! Rogers's Italy.
There as she sought repose, her sorrowing heart Recall'd her absent love with bitter sighs; Regret had deeply fix'd the poison'd dart, Cowper's Task. Which ever rankling in her bosom lies:
Not to understand a treasure's worth Till time has stol'n away the slighted good, Is cause of half the poverty we feel, And makes the world the wilderness it is.
In vain she secks to close her weary eyes, Those eyes still swim incessantly in tears, Hope in her cheerless bosom fading dies, Distracted by a thousand cruel fears,
While banish'd from his love for ever Cowper's Task.
Her fancy follow'd him through foaming waves To distant shores, and she would sit and weep At what a sailor suffers. Fancy, too, Delusive most where warmest wishes are, Would oft anticipate his glad return, And dream of transports she was not to know. Cowper's Task.
Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, My heart, untravel'd, fondly turns to thee: Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain, And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.
she appears Mrs. Tighe's Psyche.
As slow our ship her foamy track Against the wind was cleaving, Her trembling pennant still look'd back To that dear isle 't was leaving. So loath we part from all we love, From all the links that bind us; So turn our hearts, where'er we rove, To those we've left behind us.
Oh! couldst thou but know Goldsmith's Traveller. With what a deep devotedness of woe
ABSENTEES - ABSTINENCE -ACCIDENT-ACCLAMATIONS.
I wept thy absence, o'er and o'er again Thinking of thee, still thee, till thought grew pain, And memory, like a drop that night and day Falls cold and ceaseless, wore my heart away! Moore's Lalla Rookh. A boat at midnight sent alone To drift upon the moonless sea, A lute, whose leading chord is gone, A wounded bird, that hath but one Imperfect wing to soar upon,
Are like what I am, without thee!
The honours of the turf as all our own.
Go then, well worthy of the praise ye seck, And show the shame ye might conceal at home, In foreign eyes!-be grooms and win the plate, Where once your nobler fathers won a crown. Cowper's Task
Moore's Loves of the Angels. Against diseases here the strongest fence Is the defensive virtue abstinence.
Mrs. E. Oakes Smith. His speech was answered with a general noise
ACCOMPLISHMENTS-ACCUSATION-ACTION - ACTIVITY.
She is of the best blood, yet betters it With all the graces of an excellent spirit: Mild as the infant rose, and innocent
As when heav'n lent her us. Her mind as well As face, is yet a paradise untainted With blemishes, or the spreading weeds of vice. Robert Baron's Mirza.
Her even carriage is as far from coyness As from immodesty;-in play, in dancing, In suffering courtship, in requiting kindness, In use of places-hours-and companions, Free as the sun, and nothing more corrupted; As circumspect as Cynthia in her vows, And constant as the centre to observe them. George Chapman. Accomplishments were native to her mind, Like precious pearls within a clasping shell, And winning grace her every act refined, Like sunshine shedding beauty where it fell.
Give me good proofs of what you have alleged: "Tis not enough to say-in such a bush There lies a thief-in such a cave a beast,- But you must show him to me ere I shoot, Else I may kill one of my straggling sheep: I'm fond of no man's person but his virtue.
Crown's 1st part of Henry VI. None have accused thee; 'tis thy conscience cries, The witness in the soul that never dies; Its accusation, like the moaning wind, Of wintry midnight moves thy startled mind; Oh! may it melt thy hardened heart, and bring From out thy frozen soul the life of spring.
Away then, work with boldness and with speed, On greatest actions greatest dangers feed.
Marloe's Lust of Dominion. Whilst timorous knowledge stands considering Audacious ignorance hath done the deed. For who knows most, the more he knows to douht; The least discourse is commonly most stout.
Daniel. For good and well must in our actions meet; Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet. Dr. Donnie.
Take the instant way; For honour travels in a strait so narrow, Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path: For emulation hath a thousand sons, That one by one pursue: if you give way, Or edge aside from the direct forthright, Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by, And leave you hindmost.
Shaks. Troi. and Cress.
Let's take the instant by the forward top; For we are old, and on our quick'st decrees, The inaudible and noiseless foot of time Steals, ere we can effect them.
Shaks. All's well. Come,-I have learn'd, that fearful commenting Is laden servitor to dull delay; Delay leads impotent and snail-pac'd beggary. Then fiery expedition be my wing, Jove's Mercury, and herald for a king! Go, muster men: my counsel is my shield: We must be brief, when traitors brave the field. Shaks. Richard III.
Time, thou anticipat'st my dread exploits : The flighty purpose never is o'ertook, Unless the deed go with it: from this moment, The very firstlings of my heart shall be The firstlings of my hand. And even now, To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought
Shaks. Macbeth. Due entrance he disdain'd, and in contempt At one slight bound high overleap'd all bound Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within Lights on his feet.
Let us then be up and doing; With a heart for any fate, Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
Run if you like, but try to keep your breath; Work like a man, but don't be work'd to death. O. W. Holmes
He who hath never warr'd with misery, Nor ever tugg'd with fortune and distress, Hath had n' occasion, nor no field to try The strength and forces of his worthiness; Those parts of judgment which felicity Keeps as conceal'd, affliction must express, And only men show their abilities, And what they are, in their extremities.
Daniel on the Earl of Southampton. By adversity are wrought The greatest works of admiration, And all the fair examples of renown, Out of distress and misery are grown.
Daniel on the Earl of Southampton. Not one care wanting hour my life had tasted; But from the very instant of my birth, Incessant woes my tired heart have wasted, And my poor thoughts are ignorant of mirth. Look how one wave another still pursueth, When some great tempest holds their troops in chase;
Or as one hour another close reneweth, Milton's Paradise Lost. Or posting day supplies another's place,
To the warm soul, that, in the very instant It forms, would execute a great design!
Thomson's Coriolanus. The keen spirit
Seizes the prompt occasion,-makes the thought Start into instant action, and at once Plans and performs, resolves and executes! Hannah More's Daniel.
My days, though few, have passed below In much of joy though more of woe; Yet still, in hours of love or strife, I've 'scap'd the weariness of life.
So do the billows of affliction beat me, And hand in hand the storms of mischief go; Successive cares with utter ruin threat me, Grief is enchain'd with grief, and woe with woe. Samuel Brandon's Octavia.
Byron's Giaour. According to the force with which 'twas thrown So in affliction's violence, he that's wise, The more he's cast down, will the higher rise. Nabb's Microcosmos Though affliction, at the first, doth ver
Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us
Footsteps on the sands of time.
Longfellows Poems. Most virtuous natures, from the sense that 'tis
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