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ADVICE TO CHILDREN

E careful of our children: let them know that to be truly great they must be good: let glory, like a sea-mark, guide their course in the rough voyages of tempestuous life; season their early youth with wholesome precepts; teach them to merit, not desire dominion; but above all, let fortitude and courage prepare their minds for fortune's fickle turns, that they in all events may be the same.

E. HAYWOOD

339

FORT

OF FORTUNE

ORTUNAM insanam esse et cæcam et brutam perhibent philosophi

saxoque instare eam globoso prædicant volubilem ; ideo quo saxum fors impulerit, cadere fortunam

autumant.

Cæcam ob eam rem esse memorant, quia nihil cernat quo sese applicet:

insanam autem illam aiunt, quia atrox incerta instabilisque sit:

brutam autem, quia dignum atque indignum nequeat internoscere.

Sunt autem et alii philosophi, qui contra fortunam negent

esse ullam sed temeritate omnia autument regi. Id magis

verisimile aiunt; quod usus reapse experiundo edocet. M. PACVVIVS

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THE MURDERER'S CHILDREN

OH, what a life must theirs be, those poor inno

cents,

when they have grown up to a sense of sorrow,
oh, what a feast will they be for rude misery:
honest men's boys and girls, where'er they mingle,
will spurn them with the black and branded title,
the murderer's children; infamy will pin

that pestilent label on their backs;

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and if they beg, for beggars they must be,
they'll drive them from their doors with cruel jeers.

H. M. MILMAN

VICISSITUDE

'OR what is it on earth,

nay under heaven, continues at a stay?
Ebbs not the sea, when it hath overflown?
Follows not darkness, when the day is gone?
And see we not sometimes the eye of heaven
dimmed with o'erflying clouds? there's not that work
of careful nature or of cunning art

how strong, how beauteous, or how rich it be,
but falls in time to ruin.

W. SHAKESPEARE

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HE came weeping forth,

SHE

shining through tears, like April suns in showers, that labour to o'ercome the cloud that loads them: while two young virgins, on whose arms she leaned, kindly looked up and at her grief grew sad,

as if they catched the sorrows that fell from her;
even the lewd rabble, that were gathered round
to see that fight, stood mute when they beheld her,
governed their roaring throats and grumbled pity.

T. OTWAY

343 NIHIL Agere semper infelici esST OPTIMVM

IVE me pursuit and business: keep my mind awake with expectation or enjoyment

of real pleasure and of active good,

if you would make me blest. I'll ne'er be buried

alive in your imagined indolence,

your gloomy sloth mistaken for repose;

the working soul, unexercised abroad,

like martial nations, turns its numerous powers
upon itself, and sunk by native weight,

begins intestine broils and war at home.

JEFFERY

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Som.

ATTACHED SERVANT

O, my dear lady, I could weary stars

No

and force the wakeful moon to lose her eyes, by my late watching, but to wait on you.

When at your prayers you kneel before the altar,
methinks I'm singing with some quire in heaven,
so blest I hold me in your company.

Therefore, my most loved mistress, do not bid
your boy, so serviceable, to get hence;
for then you break his heart.

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POLYPHONTES TO MEROPE

P. MASSINGER

ASK thee not to approve thy husband's death,
no, nor expect thee to admit the grounds,

in reason good,, which justified my deed:
with women the heart argues, not the mind.
But, for thy children's death, I stand assoiled;
I saved them, meant them honour; but thy friends
rose, and with fire and sword assailed my house
by night; in that blind tumult they were slain.
To chance impute their deaths, then, not to me.

M. ARNOLD

JUDGMENTS ARE OF different RANGE

EARL OF SOMERSET-EARL OF WARWICK

Ju

UDGE you, my Lord of Warwick, then between us.
War. Between two hawks which flies the higher

pitch,

between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth,
between two blades, which bears the better temper,
between two horses, which doth bear him best,
between two girls, which hath the merriest eye,
I have, perhaps, some shallow spirit of judgment :
but in these nice sharp quillets of the law,
good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.

W. SHAKESPEARE

347

PAIN

WHAT

THAT avails strength, though matchless, quelled with pain,

which all subdues, and makes remiss the hands

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of mightiest? Sense of pleasure we may well
spare out of life, perhaps, and not repine;
but live content, which is the calmest life;
but pain is perfect misery, the worst

of evils, and excessive overturns

all patience.

REMORSE

J. MILTON

URN all your eyes on me here stands a man all

TUR

on me:

Set swords against this breast, some honest man, for I have lived till I am pitied!

my former deeds were hateful: but this last

is pitiful, for I unwillingly

have given the dear preserver of my life
unto his torture. Is it in the power

of flesh and blood to carry this and live?

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER

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PROSPECT OF DEATH WELCOMED

METHINKS I'm more at ease now death ap

proaches,

secure of any future separation

from her I love.

We soon shall meet never to part again;
in that my hopes are centered, and by that
imagination wound so high, that now
my soul intent on Paradise in her,

even on the rack its firmness shall maintain,
all wrapt in thought and negligent of pain.

OUR MOTHER EARTH

OT on a path of reprobation runs

NOT

J. TRAP

the trembling Earth; God's eye doth follow her. Speak no harsh words of Earth, she is our mother, and few of us, her sons, who have not added

a wrinkle to her brow. She gave us birth,
we drew our nurture from her ample breast,
and there is coming for us all an hour

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when we shall pray that she will ope her arms
and take us back again.

THE

TRIAL THE TEST OF VIRTUE

A. SMITH

HE hero works thro' storms his way to glory,
virtue like purest gold is proved in fire.
The sinewy Cyclops his rough metal steeled,
and arms on adamantine anvils nealed,

with heat and strength hardened the massy bar,
and clothed th' immortal leader of the war;
armed with impenetrable mail the god
triumphant o'er gigantic squadrons rode.
Our passions are the legions we should quell,
and solid virtue is the tempered steel.

CH. JOHNSON

MARCIA TO LUCIA-RESIGNATION

LET us to thods submit the event of things.

ET us not, Lucia, aggravate our sorrows,

Our lives, discolored with our present woes,
may still grow bright and smile with happier hours.
So the pure limpid stream, when foul with stains
of rushing torrents and descending rains,
works itself clear and, as it runs, refines;
till by degrees the floating mirror shines,
reflects each flower that on the border grows,
and a new heaven in its fair bosom shows.

CAR

INVOCATION TO SLEEP

J. ADDISON

ARE-CHARMING Sleep, thou easer of all woes,
brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose

on this afflicted prince; fall, like a cloud,
in gentle showers; give nothing that is loud
or painful to his slumbers; easy, light,
and as a purling stream, thou son of Night,
pass by his troubled senses; sing his pain,
like hollow murmuring wind or silver rain;
into this prince gently, oh, gently slide,
and kiss him into slumbers like a bride.

J. FLETCHER

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