From “An Essay on Man,” Epistle IV.
WHAT ’s fame?—a fancied life in others’ breath,
A thing beyond us, e’en before our death.
Just what you hear, you have; and what ’s unknown
The same (my lord) if Tully’s, or your own.
All that we feel of it begins and ends
In the small circle of our foes or friends;
To all beside, as much an empty...
-
-
A Shoal of idlers, from a merchant craft
Anchored off Alexandria, went ashore,
And mounting asses in their headlong glee,
Round Pompey’s Pillar rode with hoots and taunts,
As men oft say, “What art thou more than we?”
Next in a boat they floated up the Nile,
Singing and drinking, swearing senseless oaths,
Shouting, and laughing most... -
From “Idyls of the King”
TURN, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud;
Turn thy wild wheel through sunshine, storm, and cloud;
Thy wheel and thee we neither love nor hate.Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown;
With that wild wheel we go not up or down;
Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.Smile and we...
-
From “Fanny”
BUT Fortune, like some others of her sex,
Delights in tantalizing and tormenting.
One day we feed upon their smiles,—the next
Is spent in swearing, sorrowing, and repenting.* * * * *
Eve never walked in Paradise more pure
Than on that morn when Satan played the devil
With her and all her race... -
He who bends to himself a joy
Does the wingèd life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.If you trap the moment before it is ripe,
The tears of repentance you ’ll certainly wipe;
But if once you let the ripe moment go,
You can never wipe off the tears of woe. -
Master of human destinies am I.
Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait.
Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate
Deserts and seas remote, and passing by
Hovel, and mart, and palace—soon or late
I knock unbidden once at every gate!If sleeping, wake—if feasting, rise before
I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
And they who... -
Not every thought can find its words,
Not all within is known;
For minds and hearts have many chords
That never yield their tone.Tastes, instincts, feelings, passions, powers,
Sleep there, unfelt, unseen;
And other lives lie hid in ours—
The lives that might have been;Affections whose transforming force
... -
I.
a Horse-shoe nailed, for luck, upon a mast;
That mast, wave-bleached, upon the shore was cast!
I saw, and thence no fetich I revered,
But safe, through tempest, to my haven steered.II.
The place with rose and myrtle was o’ergrown,
Yet Fear and Sorrow held it for their own.
A garden then I sowed without one fear,—
Sowed... -
Homely phrase of our southland bright—
Keep steady step to the flam of the drum;
Touch to the left—eyes to the right—
Sing with the soul tho’ the lips be dumb.
Hard to be good when the wind ’s in the east;
Hard to be gay when the heart is down;
When “they that trouble you are increased,”
When you look for a smile and see a frown.... -
O That the chemist’s magic art
Could crystallize this sacred treasure!
Long should it glitter near my heart,
A secret source of pensive pleasure.The little brilliant, ere it fell,
Its lustre caught from Chloe’s eye;
Then, trembling, left its coral cell,—
The spring of Sensibility!Sweet drop of pure and pearly light!...