an' youth
For the gret prize o' death in battle?
_The Biglow Papers, Second Series, No. X_.
J.R. LOWELL.

God's soldier he be!
Had I as many sons as I have hairs.
I would not wish them to a fairer death:
And so his knell is knolled.
_Macbeth, Act v. Sc. 8_. SHAKESPEARE.

O, now, forever
Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars,
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,

The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
The immortal Jove's dread clamors counterfeit,
Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone!
_Othello, Act iii. Sc. 3_. SHAKESPEARE.


SOLITUDE.

All heaven and earth are still,--though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most:
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep;--
All heaven and earth are still;

* * * * *

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are _least_ alone.
_Childe Harold, Canto III_. LORD BYRON.

When, musing on companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone.
_Marmion, Canto II. Introduction_. SIR W. SCOTT.

_Alone_!--that worn-out word,
So idly spoken, and so coldly heard;
Yet all that poets sing, and grief hath known,
Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word--_Alone_!
_The New Timon, Pt. II_. E. BULWER-LYTTON.

O! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought,
Lost to the noble, sallies of the soul!
Who think it solitude to be alone.
_Night Thoughts, Night IV_. DR. E. YOUNG.

Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit,
But God to man doth speak in solitude.
_Highland Solitude_. J.S. BLACKIE.

But, if much converse perhaps
Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield;
For solitude sometimes is best society,
And short retirement urges sweet return.
_Paradise Lost, Bk. IX_. MILTON.

Few are the faults we flatter when alone.
_Night Thoughts, Night V_. DR. E. YOUNG.

'Tis solitude should teach us how to die;
It hath no flatterers: vanity can give
No hollow aid; alone--man with his God must strive.
_Childe Harold, Canto II_. LORD BYRON.

How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude?
But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper--solitude is sweet.
_Retirement_. W. COWPER.


SORROW.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions.
_Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 5_. SHAKESPEARE.

One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
So fast they follow.
_Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 7_. SHAKESPEARE.

Woes cluster; rare are solitary woes;
They love a train, they tread each other's heel.
_Night Thoughts, Night III_. DR. E. YOUNG.

Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate,
Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours
Weeping upon his bed has sate,
He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers.
_Hyperion, Bk. I. Motto: from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister_.
H.W. LONGFELLOW.

One fire burns out another's burning;
One pain is lessened by another's anguish;
Turn giddy, and be helped by backward turning;
One desp'rate grief cures with another's languish;
Take thou some new infection to the eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.
_Romeo and Juliet, Act i. Sc. 2_. SHAKESPEARE.

All that's bright must fade,--
The brightest still the fleetest;
All that's sweet was made
But to be lost when sweetest!
_National Airs: All that's bright must fade_. T. MOORE.

O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
_Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 2_. SHAKESPEARE.

Weep no more, nor sigh, nor groan.
Sorrow calls no time that's gone:
Violets plucked, the sweetest rain
Makes not fresh nor grow again.
_The Queen of Corinth, Act iii. Sc. 2_. J. FLETCHER.

Sorrows remembered sweeten present joy.
_The Course of Time, Bk. I_. R. POLLOK.

Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest showers,
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest winds.
_Misc. Sonnets, Pt. I. XXXIII_. W. WORDSWORTH.

Affliction is the good man's shining scene;
Prosperity conceals his brightest ray;
As night to stars, woe lustre gives to man.
_Night Thoughts, Night IX_. DR. E. YOUNG.

Like a ball that bounds
According to the force with which 'twas thrown
So in affliction's violence, he that's wise
The more he's cast down will the higher rise.
_Microcosmos_. T. NABBES.

O, fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know erelong,--
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
_The Light of Stars_. H.W. LONGFELLOW.


SOUL.

Summe up at night what thou hast done by day;
And in the morning what thou hast to do.
Dresse and undresse thy soul; mark the decay
And growth of it: if, with thy watch, that too
Be down, then winde up both; since we shall be
Most surely judged, make thy accounts agree.
_The Temple: The Church Porch_. G. HERBERT.

Go to your bosom;
Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.
_Measure for Measure, Act ii. Sc. 2_. SHAKESPEARE.

O ignorant, poor man! what dost thou bear
Locked up within the casket of thy breast?
What jewels and what riches hast thou there?
What heavenly treasure in so weak a chest?
_Worth of the Soul_. SIR J. DAVIES.

Let Fortune empty all her quiver on me;
I have a soul that like an ample shield,
Can take in all, and verge enough for more.
_Sebastian, Act i. Sc. 1_. J. DRYDEN.

And keeps that palace of the soul serene.
_Of Tea_. E. WALLER.

A happy soul, that all the way
To heaven hath a summer's day.
_In Praise of Lessius' Mule of Health_. R. CRASHAW.

And rest at last where souls unbodied dwell,
In ever-flowing meads of Asphodel.
_Odyssey, Bk. XXIV_. HOMER. _Trans. of_ POPE.


SPEECH.

Persuasive speech, and more persuasive sighs,
Silence that spoke, and eloquence of eyes.
_Iliad, Bk. XIV_. HOMER. _Trans. of_ POPE.

Discourse may want an animated "No"
To brush the surface, and to make it flow;
But still remember, if you mean to please,
To press your point with modesty and ease.
_Conversation_. W. COWPER.

One whom the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish like enchanting harmony.
_Love's Labor's Lost, Act i. Sc. 1_. SHAKESPEARE.

Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks,
The air, a chartered libertine, is still.
_King Henry V., Act i. Sc. 1_. SHAKESPEARE.

Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks.
_Parody on Pope_. C. CIBBER.

Yet Hold it more humane, more heavenly, first,
By winning words to conquer willing hearts,
And make persuasion do the work of fear.
_Paradise Regained, Bk. I_. MILTON.

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
_Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 3_. SHAKESPEARE.

"Careful with fire," is good advice, we know,
"Careful with words," is ten times doubly so.
Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead:
But God Himself can't kill them when they're said.
_First Settler's Story_. W. CARLETON.


SPIRITS.

GLENDOWER.--I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
HOTSPUR. --Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
_King Henry IV., Pt. I. Act III. Sc. 1_. SHAKESPEARE.

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep.
_Paradise Lost, Bk. IV_. MILTON.

Spirits when they please
Can either sex assume, or both,

* * * * *

Can execute their airy purposes,
And works of love or enmity fulfil.
_Paradise Lost, Bk, I_. MILTON.

But shapes that come not at an earthly call
Will not depart when mortal voices bid;
Lords of the visionary eye, whose lid,
Once raised, remains aghast, and will not fall!
_Dion_. W. WORDSWORTH.

I shall not see thee. Dare I say
No spirit ever brake the band
That stays him from the native land,
Where first he walked when clasped in clay?

No visual shade of some one lost,
But he, the spirit himself, may come
Where all the nerve of sense is numb;
Spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost.
_In Memoriam, XCII_. A. TENNYSON.


STAGE, THE.

Where is our usual manager of mirth?
What revels are in hand? Is there no play,
To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?
_Midsummer Night's Dream, Act v. Sc. 1_. SHAKESPEARE.

Prologues, like compliments, are loss of time;
'Tis penning bows and making legs in rhyme.
_Prologue to Crisp's Tragedy of Virginia_. D. GARRICK.

Prologues precede the piece in mournful verse,
As undertakers walk before the hearse.
_Prologue to Apprentice_. D. GARRICK.

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting,
'Twas only that when he was off, he was acting.
_Retaliation_. O. GOLDSMITH.

The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give.
For we that live to please, must please to live.
_Prologue. Spoken by Mr. Garrick on Opening Drury
Lane Theatre, 1747_. DR. S. JOHNSON.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold--
For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage.
_Prologue to Addison's Cato_. A. POPE.

As in a theatre, the eyes of men,
After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious.
_Richard II., Act v. Sc. 2_. SHAKESPEARE.

Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned?
_Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2_. SHAKESPEARE.

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears.
_Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2_. SHAKESPEARE.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage, where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.
_Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 1_. SHAKESPEARE.

I have heard
That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions.

* * * * *

The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
_Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2_. SHAKESPEARE.

Lo, where the stage, the poor, degraded stage,
Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age.
_Curiosity_. C. SPRAGUE.

A veteran see! whose last act on the stage
Entreats your smiles for sickness and for age;
Their cause I plead,--plead it in heart and mind;
A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.
_Prologue on Quitting the Stage in 1776_. D. GARRICK.

Who teach the mind its proper face to scan,
And hold the faithful mirror up to man.
_The Actor_. R. LLOYD.


STAR.

That full star that ushers in the even.
_Sonnet CXXXII_. SHAKESPEARE.

Her blue eyes sought the west afar,
For lovers love the western star.
_Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto III_. SIR W. SCOTT.

And fast by, hanging in a golden chain
This pendent world, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.
_Paradise Lost, Bk. II_. MILTON.

Devotion! daughter of astronomy!
An undevout astronomer is mad.
_Night Thoughts, Night IX_. DR. E. YOUNG.

There does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
And cast a gleam over this tufted grove.
_Comus_. MILTON.

Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
_Evangeline, Pt. I_. H.W. LONGFELLOW.

'Tis the witching hour of night,
Orbed is the moon and bright,
And the stars they glisten, glisten,
Seeming with bright eyes to listen--
For what listen they?
_A Prophecy_. J. KEATS.

There is no light in earth or heaven
But the cold light of stars;
And the first watch of night is given
To the red planet Mars.
_The Light of Stars_. H.W. LONGFELLOW.

Sweet Phosphor, bring the day;
Light will repay
The wrongs of night;
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day!
_Emblems, Bk. I_. F. QUARLES.

At whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads.
_Paradise Lost, Bk. IV_. MILTON.

Nor sink those stars in empty night,--
They hide themselves in heaven's own