"But if any old Lady, Knight, Priest, or Physician, Should condemn me for printing a second edition; If good Madam Squintum my work should abuse, May I venture to give her a smack of my muse?" ...
Doubtless, sweet girl, the hissing lead, Wafting destruction near thy charms, And hurtling[1] o'er thy lovely head, Has fill'd that breast with fond alarms.
Rosalind. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller; Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits: disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your Nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I...
Oh, thou, in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth, Muse, formed or fabled at the minstrel's will! Since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth, Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill:...
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand: I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:...
Come, blue-eyed maid of heaven! - but thou, alas, Didst never yet one mortal song inspire - Goddess of Wisdom! here thy temple was, And is, despite of war and wasting fire,...
Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child! Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart? When last I saw thy young blue eyes, they smiled, And then we parted, - not as now we part,...
Not in those climes where I have late been straying, Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed, Not in those visions to the heart displaying Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed,...
I stood beside the grave of him who blazed The Comet of a season, and I saw The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed With not the less of sorrow and of awe...
O ye! who teach the ingenuous youth of nations, Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain, I pray ye flog them upon all occasions, It mends their morals, never mind the pain:...
The world is full of orphans: firstly, those Who are so in the strict sense of the phrase (But many a lonely tree the loftier grows Than others crowded in the forest's maze);...
O Love! O Glory! what are ye who fly Around us ever, rarely to alight? There 's not a meteor in the polar sky Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight. Chill, and chain'd to cold earth, we lift on high...
The antique Persians taught three useful things, To draw the bow, to ride, and speak the truth. This was the mode of Cyrus, best of kings - A mode adopted since by modern youth....
'There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, - taken at the flood,' - you know the rest, And most of us have found it now and then; At least we think so, though but few have guess'd...
Fill the goblet again! for I never before Felt the glow which now gladdens my heart to its core; Let us drink! - who would not? - since, through life's varied round,...