Though loveliness will pass away
From individual beings, and is oft
More mortal than the human heirs of death,
Yet abstract beauty since at first the will
Of heaven-designed Creation, through the lapse
Of past eternity, has ever been
A living essence, an immortal thing.
Each generation views it fresh and fair,
As that which went before; and though the hand
Of death will grasp the sweetest flowers on earth,
Others become their likeness; and when sounds
The trumpet through the systems, all shall rise
With deathless being and regenerate form;
And through the future shall undying love
Perfect the soul of beauteousness, and shake
Decay from those she dwells with, to adorn
Through endless years the palaces of heaven.
Dilnot Sladden.
Only the beautiful is real:
All things whereof our life is full,
All mysteries that life enwreathe,
Birth, life, and death,
All that we dread or darkly feel,-
All are but shadows; and the beautiful
Alone is real.
Love, truth, and beauty-all are one:
If life may expiate
The wilderings of its dimness, death be known
But as the mighty ever-living gate
Into the beautiful:All things flow on
Into one heart, into one melody,
Is beauty vain because it will fade?
Then are earth's green robe and heaven's light vain; For this shall be lost in evening's shade, And that in winter's sleety rain.
Beauty was lent to nature as the type
Of heaven's unspeakable and holy joy,
Where all perfection makes the sum of bliss.
Of sweet repose, where by th' oblivious draught
Of each sad toilsome day to peace restored,
Unhappy mortals lose their woes awhile.
In bed we laugh, in bed we cry,
And born in bed, in bed we die;
The near approach a bed may show
Of human bliss and human woe.
Night is the time for rest;
How sweet when labours close,
To gather round our aching breast
The curtain of repose,
Stretch the tired limbs, and lay the head
Down on our own delightful bed.
Oh, bed! Oh, bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head,
But a place that to name would be ill-bred,
To the head with a wakeful trouble:
'Tis held by such a different lease,
To one a place of comfort and peace,
And stuffed with the down of stubble geese,
To another with only the stubble.
WHILE I am a beggar, I will rail, And say there is no sin but to be rich: And being rich, my virtue then shall be To say there is no vice but beggary. The country gives me proof and precedent Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, Strike in their numbed and mortified bare arms, Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary, And with this horrible abject from low farms, Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills, Sometimes with lunatic bans, sometimes with prayers, Enforce their charity. Shakspere.
Art thou a man? And sham'st not thou to beg?
To practise such a servile kind of life?
Why, were thy education ne'er so mean,
Having thy limbs, a thousand fairer courses
Offer themselves to thy election.
When beggars grow thus bold,
No marvel then though charity grow cold.-Drayton.
Base wordlings, that despise all such as need;
Who to the needy beggar still are dumb,
Not knowing unto what themselves may come.
Heywood.
He makes a beggar first that first relieves him;
Not us'rers make more beggars where they live,
Than charitable men that use to give. Heywood.
Beggars! the only free men of our commonwealth;
Free above scot-free; that observe no laws,
Obey no governor, use no religion,
But what they draw from their own ancient custom,
Or constitute themselves; yet are no rebels.
What subjects will precarious kings regard?
A beggar speaks too softly to be heard.
His house was known to all the vagrant train;
He chid their wanderings, but reliev'd their pain;
The long-remember'd beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast.
Goldsmith.
The beggar, as he stretched his shrivelled hand,
Raised not his eyes, and those who dropped the mite
Passed on unnoticed.
A beggar through the world am I,
From place to place I wander by;
Fill up my pilgrim's scrip for me,
For Christ's sweet sake and charity.
THIS fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons pease;
And utters it again when God doth please:
He is wit's pedlar; and retails his wares
At wakes, and wassels, meetings, markets, fairs,
And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,
Have not the grace to grace it with such show.
This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve;
Had he been Adam he had tempted Eve.
He can carve too, and lisp: why this is he
That kiss'd his hand away in courtesy;
This is the ape of form, Monsieur the nice,
That when he plays at tables, chides the dice
In honourable terms: nay he can sing
A mean most meanly; and in ushering
Mend him who can: the ladies call him Sweet;
The stairs, as he treads on them kiss his feet.
This is the flower that smiles on every one,
To shew his teeth as white as whale his bone:
And consciences that will not die in debt,
Pay him the due of honey-tongu'd Boyet.
See where it comes!-Behaviour what wert thou
Till this man shew'd thee? and what art thou now?
To their wills wedded, to their errors slaves,
No man like them they think himself behaves.
Behave yoursel' before folk,
Behave yoursel' before folk,
And dinna be sae rude to me,
As kiss me sae before folk.
It wad na' gie me meikle pain,
Gin we were seen and heard by nane,
To tak a kiss or grant ye ane;
But gude sake! no before folk,
Behave yoursel' before folk,
Behave yoursel' before folk.
Whate'er ye do when out of view,
Be cautious aye before folk.
BEING-BEINGS.
THERE is none but he
Whose being I do fear; and under him
The Father, first they sung, omnipotent,
Immutable, immortal, infinite,
Eternal King! Thee, author of all being.
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate; From brutes what men, from men what spirits know; Or who could suffer being here below.
The beings of the mind are not of clay,
Essentially immortal, they create
And multiply in us a brighter ray,
And more belov'd existence.
Like the Chaldean, he could watch the stars
Till he had peopled them with beings bright
As their own beams.
Now God be praised, that to believing souls,
Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair.
He can, I know, but doubt to think he will;
Yet hope would fain subscribe, and tempts belief.
Milton.
Those comforts that shall never cease,
Future in hope, but present in belief. Wotton.
You may believe, and pawn your soul upon it.
Shirley.
Oh! how unlike the complex works of man,
Heaven's easy, artless, unincumbered plan!
No meretricious graces to beguile,
No clustering ornaments to clog the pile;
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