The British Essayists: Rambler

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James Ferguson
J. Richardson and Company, 1823 - English essays

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Page 13 - Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree ? The sun to me is dark And silent, as the moon, When she deserts the night, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Page 6 - I begin to feel Some rousing motions in me, which dispose To something extraordinary my thoughts. I with this messenger will go along, Nothing to do, be sure, that may dishonour Our law, or stain my vow of Nazarite. If there be aught of presage in the mind, This day will be remarkable in my life By some great act, or of my days the last.
Page 154 - The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry 'Hold, hold!
Page 30 - Venus, take my votive glass, Since I am not what I was ; What from this day I shall be, venus, let me never see.
Page 235 - One of the great arts of escaping superfluous uneasiness, is to free our minds from the habit of comparing our condition with that of others on whom the blessings of life are more bountifully bestowed, or with imaginary states of delight and security, perhaps unattainable by mortals.
Page 153 - No word is naturally or intrinsically meaner than another; our opinion therefore of words, as of other things arbitrarily and capriciously established, depends wholly upon accident and custom.
Page 154 - That my keen knife see not the wound it makes ; Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, Hold ! hold...
Page 9 - I not been thus exiled from light, As in the land of darkness, yet in light, To live a life half dead, a living death, And buried ; but, O yet more miserable ! Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave, Buried, yet not exempt, By privilege of death and burial, From worst of other evils, pains, and wrongs, But made hereby obnoxious more To all the miseries of life, Life in captivity Among inhuman foes.
Page 154 - ... it without some disturbance of his attention from the counteraction of the words to the ideas. What can be more dreadful than to implore the presence of night, invested not in common obscurity, but in the smoke of hell ? Yet the efficacy of this invocation is destroyed by the insertion of an epithet now seldom heard but in the stable, and dun° night may come or go without any other notice than contempt.
Page 92 - The gates of hell are open night and day ; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way : But, to return, and view the cheerful skies — In this the task and mighty labour lies.

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