From “Moral Essays,” Epistle I.
SEARCH thou the ruling passion; there, alone,
The wild are constant, and the cunning known;
The fool consistent and the false sincere;
Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.* * * * *
In this the lust, in that the avarice,
Were means, not ends; ambition was the vice...
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From “The Pleasures of Memory”
ETHEREAL power! who at the noon of night
Recall’st the far fled spirit of delight;
From whom that musing, melancholy mood
Which charms the wise, and elevates the good;
Blest Memory, hail! O grant the grateful muse,
Her pencil dipped in nature’s living hues,
To pass the clouds that round thy empire roll,... -
During His Solitary Abode in the Island of Juan Fernandez
I AM monarch of all I survey,—
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea,
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this... -
From the German by Thomas Carlyle
From “Wilhelm Meister”
“KNOW’ST thou the land where citron-apples bloom,
And oranges like gold in leafy gloom,
A gentle wind from deep-blue heaven blows,
The myrtle thick, and high the laurel grows?
Know’st thou it then?
’T is there! ’T is there,
O my true loved one, thou with me... -
Oft in the stilly night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me:
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood’s years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken.
Thus in the stilly night,... -
Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes
To pace the ground, if path there be or none,
While a fair region round the traveller lies
Which he forbears again to look upon;
Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene,
The work of fancy, or some happy tone
Of meditation, slipping in between
The beauty coming and the beauty gone.
If Thought... -
From “The Excursion,” Book I.
O, MANY are the poets that are sown
By nature; men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the faculty divine;
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse
(Which, in the docile season of their youth,
It was denied them to acquire, through lack
Of culture and the inspiring aid of books,
Or haply by a... -
How many verses have I thrown
Into the fire because the one
Peculiar word, the wanted most,
Was irrecoverably lost! -
From “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” Canto V.
CALL it not vain:—they do not err,
Who say, that when the poet dies,
Mute nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies;
Who say tall cliff, and cavern lone,
For the departed bard make moan;
That mountains weep in crystal rill;
That flowers in tears of balm... -
From the German by Lord Bulwer-Lytton
“TAKE the world,” cried the God from his heaven
To men—“I proclaim you its heirs;
To divide it amongst you ’t is given:
You have only to settle the shares.”Each takes for himself as it pleases,
Old and young have alike their desire:
The harvest the husbandman seizes;
Through the wood...