Charity ever

Finds in the act reward, and needs no trumpet

In the receiver.

Beaumont and Fletcher.

Let shining charity adorn your zeal,

The noblest impulse generous minds can feel.

Aaron Hill.

In faith and hope the world will disagree,
But all mankind's concerned in charity;

All must be false, that thwart this one great end;
And all of God, that bless mankind, or mend.

Self-love thus pushed to social,-to divine,
Gives thee to make thy neighbour's blessing thine.
Is this too little for the boundless heart?
Extend it let thy enemies have part,

Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense,
In one close system of benevolence:
Happier as kinder, in whate'er degree,

And height of bliss but height of charity.

Charity, decent, modest, easy, kind,

Pope.

Softens the high, and rears the abject mind;
Knows with just reins and gentle hand, to guide
Betwixt vile shame and arbitrary pride:
Not soon provoked, she easily forgives,
And much she suffers, as she much believes:
Soft peace she brings, wherever she arrives,
She builds our quiet as she forms our lives;
Lays the rough paths of peevish nature even,
And opens in each heart a little heaven.

When constant faith and holy hope shall die,
One lost in certainty, and one in joy,
Then, thou more happy power, fair Charity!
Triumphant sister! greatest of the three!
Thy office and thy nature still the same,
Lasting thy lamp, and unconsumed thy flame,
Shall stand before the host of Heaven confest,
For ever blessing, and for ever blest.

Prior.

For true charity,

Though ne'er so secret, finds a just reward.

It was sufficient that his wants were known;
True charity makes others' wants their own.

May.

Robt. Dauborne.

What numbers, once in fortune's lap high-fed,
Solicit the cold hand of charity!

To shock us more, solicit it in vain!

True charity, a plant divinely nursed,
Fed by the love by which it rose at first,
Thrives against hope, and, in the rudest scene,
Storms but enliven its unfading green;
Exuberant is the shadow it supplies,

Its fruit on earth, its growth above the skies.

Did charity prevail, the press would prove
A vehicle of virtue, truth, and love.

The dews come down unseen at eventide,
And silently their bounties shed, to teach
Mankind unostentatious charity.

Young.

Cowper.

Pollok.

Oh, Charity! our helpless nature's pride,
Thou friend to him who knows no friend beside,
Is there in morning's breath, or the sweet gale
That steals o'er the tired pilgrim of the vale,
Cheering with fragrance fresh his wearied frame,
Aught like the influence of thy holy flame?
Is aught in all the beauties that adorn
The azure heaven, or purple lights of morn—
Is aught so fair in evening's lingering gleam,
As from thine eye the meek, but pensive beam,
That falls like saddest moonlight on the hill
And distant woods, when the wide world is still?
Thine are the ample views that, unconfined,
Stretch to the utmost walks of human kind;
Thine is the spirit, that, with widest plan,
Brother to brother binds, and man to man.

William Lisle Bowles.

The ear, inclined to every voice of grief,
The hand that op'ed spontaneous to relief,
The heart whose impulse stayed not for the mind
To freeze, to doubt what charity enjoined,

Best spring to man's warm instinct for mankind.
The New Timon.

O, rich man's son! there is a toil
That with all others level stands;
Large charity doth never soil,

But only whitens soft white hands;-
This is the best crop for thy lands;

A heritage, it seems to me,

Worth being rich to hold in fee.-J. R. Lowell.

CHARM.

WELL-Sounding verses are the charm we use,
Heroic thoughts and virtue to infuse.

No fantastic robe,

That e'er caprice invented, custom wore,

Roscommon.

Or folly smiled on could eclipse thy charms.

Amoret, my lovely foe,

Tell me where thy strength does lie;

Where the power that charms us so-
In thy soul, or in thine eye?

Shenstone.

Waller.

The passion you pretended
Was only to obtain;

But when the charm is ended,
The charmer you disdain.

The lily's hue, the rose's dye,
The kindling lustre of an eye,
Who but owns their magic sway,
Who but knows they all decay?
The tender thrill, the pitying tear,
The generous purpose, nobly dear,
The gentle look that rage disarms,
These are all immortal charms.

Dryden.

Burns.

CHASTITY.

CHASTE as the icicle,

That's curdled by the frost of purest snow,
And hangs on Dian's temple.

Mine honour's such a ring:

My chastity's the jewel of our house,
Bequeathed down from many ancestors;

Shakspere.

Which were the greatest obloquy i' th' world
In me to lose.

Shakspere.

Thou, my love, art sweeter far than balmy
Incense in the purple smoke; pure and
Unspotted as the cleanly ermine, ere
The hunter sullies her with his pursuit;
Soft as her skin; chaste as th' Arabian bird
That wants a sex to woo, or as the dead,
That are divorc'd from warmth, from objects,
And from thought.
Sir W. Davenant.

On thy fair brow shines such a legend writ
Of chastity, as blinds the adultrous eye:
Not the mountain ice

Congealed to crystals, is so frosty chaste
As thy victorious soul, which conquers man,
And man's proud tyrant-passion.

So dear to heaven is saintly chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liv'ried angels lacquey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt.

Dryden.

*

She that has that is clad in complete steel,
And, like a quivered nymph with arrows keen,
May trace huge forests and unharboured heaths,
Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds,
Where, through the sacred rays of chastity,
No savage fierce bandit, or mountaineer,
Will dare to soil her virgin purity.

Yea, there, where very desolation dwells,

By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades She may pass on with unblenched majesty.-Milton.

Of all the flowers

Methinks a rose the best.

Why, gentle maiden?

It is the very emblem of a maid;

For when the west wind courts her gently,

How modestly she blows, and paints the sun

[her,

With her chaste blush! When the north comes near Rude and impatient, then, like chastity,

She locks her beauties in her bud again,
And leaves him to bare briars.

Fletcher.

That modest grace subdued my soul,
That chastity of look, which seems to hang
A veil of purest light o'er all her beauties,
And by forbidding most inflames desire.

Young.

CHEAT.

THEY say this town is full of cozenage,
As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such like libertines of sin.

Empyrick politicians use deceit,

Shakspere.

Hide what they give, and cure but by a cheat.

Dryden.

When I consider life, 't is all a cheat;
Yet fooled with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust in, and think to-morrow will repay;
To-morrow's falser than the former day;
Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest
With some new joy, cuts off what we possest.

Doubtless the pleasure is as great,
In being cheated, as to cheat,
As lookers-on feel most delight,

Dryden.

That least perceive the juggler's sleight;
And still the less they understand,

The more th' admire the sleight of hand.

Butler.