1. You have too much respect upon the world; They lose it that do buy it with much care. 2. I hold the world but as the world;
A stage where every man must play his part,
And mine a sad one.
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of the world!
Fie on 't! O, fie! 't is an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature Possess it merely. Shakspere.
The world's a hive,
From whence thou can'st derive
No good, but what thy soul's vexation brings:
But case thou meet
Some petty, petty sweet,
Each drop is guarded with a thousand stings.
'Tis a very good world that we live in, To lend, or to spend, or to give in,
But to beg, or to borrow, or get a man's own, 'Tis the very worst world, sir, that ever was known.
'Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,
To peep at such a world; to see the stir
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd;
To hear the roar she sends through all her gates,
At a safe distance, where the dying sound
Falls a soft murmur on th' uninjur'd ear.
Oh! it is beautiful to see this world
Poised in the crystal air, with all its seas,
Mountains, and plains, majestically rolling
Around its noiseless axis, day by day,
And year by year, and century after century;
And as it turns, still wheeling through the immense
Of ether, circling the resplendent sun
In calm and simple grandeur.
HEAR ye that awful truth,
With which I charge my page;
A worm is at the bud of youth,
And at the root of age.
Tho' the fair rose with beauteous blush is crown'd, Beneath her fragrant leaves the thorn is found; The peach, that with inviting crimson blooms, Deep at the heart the cank'ring worm consumes.
Time! thou vicegerent of eternity,
Thou tyrant over all-sky, earth, and sea;
Relentless, each thou crushest in its hour,
Man, and his works, brute, blushing fruit and flower,
To feed earth's lord omnipotent, the worm.
T. L. Merritt.
What is life? like a flower, with the bane in its bosom;
To-day full of promise, to-morrow it dies.
And health? like a dew-drop, that, hung in its blossom,
Survives but a night, and exhales to the skies.
For oft, in the bud that is brightest and fairest,
The seeds of the canker in embryo lurk;
And oft at the root of the flower that is rarest,
Secure in its ambush, the worm is at work.
Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun, that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more!
First worship God! he that forgets to pray,
Bids not himself good-morrow, nor good-day.
For look again on the past years;-behold,
Flown, like the nightmare's hideous shapes, away,
Full many a horrible worship. that of old,
Held, o'er the shuddering realms, unquestioned sway.
W. C. Bryant.
WORTH-WORTHINESS.
HE is not worthy of the honey-comb,
That shuns the hive because the bees have stings.
Nor are we ignorant how noble minds
Suffer too much through those indignities
Which times and vicious persons cast on them.
Ourself have ever vowed to esteem
As virtue for itself, so fortune, base;
Who's first in worth, the same be first in place.
Honour and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
Fortune in men has some small difference made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.
"What differ more," you cry, "than crown and cowl,”
I'll tell you friend!-a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man, the want of it the fellow,
The rest is all but leather and prunella.
Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth o'er a' the earth,
May hear the gree and a' that;
For a' that, and a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That man to man, the wide world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.
Firm and resolved by sterling worth to gain
Love and respect, thou shalt not strive in vain.
Sir E. Brydges.
Oh, that simplicity and innocence,
Its own unvalued worth so seldom knows!
Shelley, from Goethe.
I know transplanted human worth,
Will bloom to profit otherwhere.
FULL many mischiefs follow cruel wrath;
Abhorred bloodshed, and tumultuous strife,
Unmanly murder, and unthrifty scathe,
Bitter despite, with rancour's rusty knife,
And fretting grief-the enemy of life.
At this the knight grew high in wrath,
And lifting hands and eyes up both,
Three times he smote on stomach stout,
From whence at length these words broke out.
Alas! they had been friends in youth,
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above,
And life is thorny, and youth is vain;
And to be wrath with one we love,
Doth work like madness on the brain.
I SENT thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee,
As giving it hope that there
It could not wither'd be.
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And send'st it back to me,
Since then it grows, and smells I swear,
Not of itself but thee.
The pride of every grove I chose,
The violet sweet and lily fair,
The dappled pink and blushing rose,
To deck my charming Chloe's hair.
At morn the nymph vouchsafed to place
Upon her brow the various wreath;
The flowers less blooming than her face,
The scent less fragrant than her breath.
POOR naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm!
How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?
My loss is such as cannot be repair'd,
And to the wretched, life can be no mercy.
Dryden.
In a close lane, as I pursued my journey,
I spied a wrinkled hag with age grown double,
Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself;
Her eyes with scalding rheum were galled and red,
Cold palsy shook her head, her hands seemed withered;
And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapt
The tattered remnant of an old striped hanging,
Which served to keep her carcass from the cold;
So there was nothing of a piece about her.
Her lower weeds were all o'er coarsely patched
With different-coloured rags-black, red, white, yellow,
And seemed to speak variety of wretchedness.-Otway.
GIVE me that glass, and therein will I read;
No deeper wrinkles yet! Hath sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine,
And made no deeper wounds?
What grudge and grief our joys may then suppress,
To see our hairs which yellow were as gold,
Now grey as glass; to feel and find them less;
To scrape the bald scull which was wont to hold
Our lovely locks, with curling sticks controll'd;
To look in glass, and spy Sir Wrinkle's chair
Set fast on fronts which erst were sleek and fair.
Gascoigne.
Fled are the charms that graced that ivory brow,
Where smiled a dimple, gapes a wrinkle now.
Robert T. Pain.
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