To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:...
Authors are judged by strange capricious rules; The great ones are thought mad, the small ones fools: Yet sure the best are most severely fated; For fools are only laugh'd at, wits are hated....
What, and how great, the virtue and the art To live on little with a cheerful heart; (A doctrine sage, but truly none of mine) Let's talk, my friends, but talk before we dine;...
She said, and for her lost Calanthis sighs, When the fair Consort of her son replies. "Since you a servant's ravish'd form bemoan, And kindly sigh for sorrows not your own;...
With scornful mien, and various toss of air, Fantastic vain, and insolently fair, Grandeur intoxicates her giddy brain, She looks ambition, and she moves disdain. Far other carriage grac'd her virgin life,...
Ye nymphs of Solyma! begin the song, To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong. The mossy fountains, and the sylvan shades, The dreams of Pindus, and the Aonian maids,...
In beauty, or wit, No mortal as yet To question your empire has dared: But men of discerning Have thought that in learning To yield to a lady was hard.
1 In beauty or wit, No mortal as yet To question your empire has dared; But men of discerning Have thought that in learning To yield to a lady was hard.
'Ah, friend! 'tis true--this truth you lovers know-- In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow, In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes Of hanging mountains, and of sloping greens:...
To thee, we wretches of the Houyhnhnm band, Condemn'd to labour in a barbarous land, Return our thanks. Accept our humble lays, And let each grateful Houyhnhnm neigh thy praise. ...
Oh be thou blest with all that Heav'n can send, Long Health, long Youth, long Pleasure, and a Friend: Not with those Toys the female world admire, Riches that vex, and Vanities that tire....
Resign'd to live, prepar'd to die, With not one sin, but poetry, This day Tom's fair account has run (Without a blot) to eighty-one. Kind Boyle, before his poet, lays A table, with a cloth of bays;...
Two or three visits, and two or three bows, Two or three civil things, two or three vows, Two or three kisses, with two or three sighs, Two or three Jesus's, and let me dies,...
'See, sir, here's the grand approach, This way is for his Grace's coach: There lies the bridge, and here's the clock, Observe the lion and the cock, The spacious court, the colonnade,...