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16

ADORN. ADULATION.

Happy is he who lives to understand
Not human nature only, but explores
All natures, to the end that he may find
The law that governs each, and where begins
The union, the partition where, that makes
Kind and degree among all visible beings.

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Such converse, if directed by a meek,
Sincere, and humble spirit, teaches love;
For knowledge is delight, and such delight
Breeds love, yet suited as it rather is
To thought, and to the climbing intellect,
It teaches less to love than to adore;

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If that be not indeed the highest love!-Wordsworth.

ADORN.

THOUSANDS there are in darker fame who dwell,
Whose name some nobler poem shall adorn.

Dryden.

It is not to adorn and gild each part,
That shows more cost than art;

Jewels at nose and lip but ill appear.

Cowley.

Her polish'd limbs

Veil'd in a simple robe, their best attire,
Beyond the pomp of dress; for loveliness
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,

But is, when unadorn'd, adorn'd the most.-Thomson.

ADULATION.

O BE sick, great Greatness!

And bid thy ceremony give thee cure.

Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out,
With titles blown from adulation?

Shakspere.

Towards great persons use respective boldness,
That temper gives them theirs, and yet doth take
Nothing from thine. In service care or coldness
Doth rateably thy fortunes mar or make.
Feed no man in his sins; for adulation

Doth make the parcel devil in damnation.-Herbert.

ADVERSITY.

SWEET are the uses of adversity,

Which, like a toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.-Shakspere.

A wretched soul, bruis'd with adversity,

We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;

But were we burthened with like weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain.

By adversity are wrought

The greatest works of admiration,
And all the fair examples of renown,
Out of distress and misery are grown.

Shakspere.

What, if he hath decreed that I shall first
Be tried in humble state, and things adverse;
By tribulations, insults, injuries,

Daniel.

Contempts, and scorns, and snares, and violence!

Adversity, sage useful guest,
Severe instructor, but the best,
It is from thee alone we know
Justly to value things below.

Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge, and torturing hour,
The bad affright, afflict the best!

Bound in thy adamantine chain,

The proud are taught to taste of pain;
And purple tyrants vainly groan

Milton.

Somerville.

With pangs unfelt before, unpitied, and alone.

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Thy form benign, Oh, Goddess! wear,
Thy milder influence impart;

Thy philosophic train be there,

To soften, not to wound, my heart. The generous spark extinct revive; Teach me to love and to forgive;

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Exact my own defects to scan,

What others are, to feel, and know myself a man.

Each breast, however fortified

By courage, apathy, or pride,
Has still one secret path for thee,
Man's subtle foe-adversity.

Gray.

Mrs. Holford.

ADVICE.

LET me entreat

You to unfold the anguish of your heart;
Mishaps are mastered by advice discreet,
And counsel mitigates the greatest smart.

Spenser.

Know when to speak-for many times it brings
Danger, to give the best advice to kings.

Herrick.

If things go wrong, each fool presumes t'advise,
And if most happy, thinks himself most wise;
All wretchedly deplore the present state;

And that advice seems best which comes too late.

Take sound advice, proceeding from a heart
Sincerely yours, and free from fraudful art.

Sedley.

Dryden.

O troubled, weak, and coward as thou art!
Without thy poor advice the labouring heart
To worse extremes with swifter steps would run,
Not saved by virtue, but by vice undone.

Prior.

No part of conduct asks for skill more nice,
Though none more common, than to give advice;
Misers themselves in this will not be saving,
Unless their knowledge makes it worth the having;
And where's the wonder when we will obtrude
A useless gift, it meets ingratitude.

Stillingfleet.

ADVOCATE.

ME his advocate

And propitiation; all his works in me,

Good or not good, ingraft.

Milton.

Learn what thou ow'st thy country and thy friend;
What's requisite to spare, and what to spend:
Learn this; and after envy not the store
Of the greatest advocate who grinds the poor.

Foes to all living worth except your own,
And advocates for folly dead and gone.

AERIAL.

WHERE those immortal shapes

Of bright aerial spirits live insphered,
In regions mild of calm and serene air.

Dryden.

Pope.

Milton.

The gifts of heaven my following song pursues,
Aerial honey and ambrosial dews.

Prior.

Dryden, from Virgil. From all that can with fins or feathers fly, Through the aerial or the watery sky. Here subterranean works and cities see, There towns aerial in the waving tree.

AFFABILITY.

Pope.

HEARING of her beauty and her wit,

Her affability and bashful modesty,

Her wondrous qualities and mild behaviour.

Shakspere.

Gentle to me, and affable hath been

Milton.

Thy condescension, and shall be honoured ever
With grateful memory.

Be affable to all men, for it well
Becomes thee, howsoever high thou art

In rank or station, so to bend and meet
Thy fellow-creatures with a kindly word,
And gracious look of affability.

Egone.

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WE pour out our affections with our blood,

And with our blood's affections fill our lives.-Ovid.

What war so cruel, or what siege so sore,
As that which strong affections do apply
Against the fort of reason, evermore

To bring the soul into captivity!

Most wretched man,

Spenser.

That to affections does the bridle lend;
In their beginning they are weak and wan,
But soon through sufferance grow to fearful end.

Of all the tyrants that the world affords,
Our own affections are the fiercest lords.

Affections injured

By tyranny, or rigour of compulsion,

Spenser.

Earl of Stirling.

Like tempest-threatened trees, unfirmly rooted,
Ne'er spring to timely growth.

Her sweet humour,

That was as easy as a calm, and peaceful;
All her affections, like the dews on roses,

John Ford.

Fair as the flowers themselves, as sweet and gentle. Beaumont and Fletcher.

Alas! our young affections run to waste, Or water but the desert; whence arise But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, Rank at the core, though tempting to the eye, Flowers whese wild odours breathe but agonies, And trees whose gums are poison: such the plants Which spring beneath her steps as passion flies O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.

Byron.

Few are the fragments left of follies past;
For worthless things are transient. Those that last
Have in them germs of an eternal spirit,
And out of good their permanence inherit.

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