E’en such is time; that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days:
But from this earth, this...
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From “The Faërie Queene,” Book II. Canto 8.
AND is there care in heaven? And is there love
In heavenly spirits to these creatures base,
That may compassion of their evils move?
There is:—else much more wretched were the case
Of men than beasts: but...
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Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born:
Relieve my languish and restore the light;
With dark forgetting of my care, return,
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:...
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Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
The palm and may make country-houses gay,
Lambs frisk and...
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From the French by Henry F. Cary
GOD shield ye, heralds of the spring!
Ye faithful swallows, fleet of wing,
Houps, cuckoos, nightingales,
Turtles, and every wilder bird,
That make your hundred chirpings heard
Through the green woods and...
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O Perfect Light, which shaid away
The darkness from the light,
And set a ruler o’er the day,
Another o’er the night—
Thy glory, when the day forth flies,
More vively doth appear,
Than at mid day unto our eyes
The shining sun is...
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And now behold your tender nurse, the air,
And common neighbor that aye runs around,
How many pictures and impressions fair
Within her empty regions are there found,
Which to your senses dancing do propound!
For what are breath, speech, echoes, music...
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Quivering fears, heart-tearing cares,
Anxious sighs, untimely tears,
Fly, fly to courts,
Fly to fond worldlings’ sports,
Where strained sardonic smiles are glozing still,
And grief is forced to laugh against her will,
Where mirth...
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From “Love’s Labor ’s Lost,” Act V. Sc. 2.
WHEN icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the...
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From “King Lear,” Act IV. Sc. 6.
COME on, sir; here ’s the place: stand still!
How fearful
And dizzy ’t is, to cast one’s eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles: half-way down
Hangs one that...
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