And bid thy ceremony give the cure. Think'st thou, the fiery fever will go out With titles blown from adulation? Will it give place to flexure and low bending? Cans't thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee, Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream, "That play'st so subtly with a king's repose. I am a king, that find thee, and I know, 'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball, The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, "The enter-tissued robe of gold and pearl, The farsed-titled running 'fore the king, The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp, That beats upon the high shoar of this world; No, not all these thrice-gorgeous ceremonies, Not all these, laid in bed majestical, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave; Who, with a body fill'd, and vacant mind, Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread; Never sees horrid night, the child of hell: But, like a lacquey, from the rise to set, Sweats in the eye of Phœbus; and all night Sleeps in Elysium: next day, after dawn, Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse: And follows so the ever-running year With profitable labour to his grave : And (but for ceremony) such a wretch, Winding up days with toil, and nights with sleep, Hath the fore-hand and 'vantage of a king.
The MISERIES of WAR. (SHAKESPEARE.
HER vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, Unpruned lies: her hedges even pleach'd, Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair, Put forth disorder'd twigs: her fallow leas The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory, Doth root upon; while that the culture rusts, That should deracinate such savagery. The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, Wanting the scythe, all-uncorrected, rank, Cateives by idleness, and nothing teems
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs, Losing both beauty and utility:
And all our vineyards, fallows, meads and hedges, Defective in their natures, grow to wildness.
A GOOD CONSCIENCE.
(SHAKESPEARE.)
WHAT stronger breast-plate than a heart untainted? Thrice is he arm'd, that hath his quarrel just; And he but naked (though lock'd up in steel) Whose Conscience with injustice is corrupted.
- BE thou blest, Bertram, and succeed thy father, In manners, as in shape; thy blood and virtue Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness Share with thy birth-right! Love all; trust a few; Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend Under thine own life's key: be check'd for silence; But never tax'd for speech.
HONOUR due to PERSONAL MERIT, not to BIRTH (SHAKESPEARE.)
FROM lowest place when virtuous things proceed, The place is dignified by th' doer's deed, Where great additions swell, and virtues none, It is a dropsied honour; good alone Is good without a name; vileness is so; The property, by what it is, shou'd go, Not by the title. She is young, wise, fair; In these, to nature she's immediate heir; And these breed honour; That is honour's scorn, Which challenges itself as honour's born, And is not like the sire. Honours best thrive, When rather from our acts we them derive Than our foregoers: the mere word's a slave Debauch'd on every tomb, on every grave; A lying trophy.
Against DELAY. (SHAKESPEARE.)
LET's take the instant by the forward top; For we are old, and on our quick'st decrees The inaudible and noiseless foot of time Steals, ere we can effect them.
A fine DESCRIPTION of a SLEEPING MAN, about to be DESTROYED by a SNAKE and a LIONESS. (SHAKESPEARE.)
UNDER an oak, whose boughs were moss'd with age, And high top bald with dry antiquity; A wretched, ragged man, o'ergrown with hair, Lay sleeping on his back; about his neck A green and gilded Snake had wreath'd itself, Who with her head, nimble in threats, approach'd The opening of his mouth, but suddenly Seeing Orlando, it unlink'd itself, And with indented glides did slip away Into a bush; under which bush's shade A Lioness, with udders all drawn dry, Lay couching head on ground, with cat-like watch, When that the sleeping man should stir: for 'tis The royal disposition of that beast
To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.
DESCRIPTION of a beggarly CONJURER, or a For
TUNE-TELLER. (SHAKESPEARE.)
A HUNGRY, lean-fac'd villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank, A thread-bare juggler, and a fortune-teller, A needy, hallow-ey'd, sharp-looking wretch, A living dead man: this pernicious slave Forsooth took on him as a Conjurer; And gazing in my eyes, feeling my pulse, And with no face, as 'twere, outfacing me, Cries out, I was possest.
MERCY in GOVERNORS Commended.
No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe, Become them with one half so good a grace,
PRECEPTS against-ILL-FORTUNE.
(SHAKESPEARE)
-You were us'd
To say, extremity was the trier of spirits; That common chances common men could bear, That, when the sea was calm, all boats alike Shew'd mastership in floating. Fortune's blows, When most struck home, being gently warded, craves A noble cunning You were us'd to load me With precepts, that would make invincible The heart that conn'd them.
ENGLAND INVINCIBLE, if UNANIMOUS. (SHAKESPEARE.)
ENGLAND never did, nor ever shall Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, But when it first did help to wound itself. Now these her princes are come home again, Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them -Nought shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true.
CEREMONY INSINCERE.
(SHAKESPEARE.)
-EVER note, Lucilius,
When love begins to sicken and decay, It useth an enforced ceremony:
There are no tricks in plain and simple faith; But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,
Make gallant shew and promise of their mettle; But when they should endure the bloody spur,
They fall their crest, and, like deceitful jades, Sink in the trial.
HOUNDS and HUNTING.
(SHAKESPEARE.)
I WAS with Hercules and Cadmus once, When, in a wood of Crete, they bay'd the boar With hounds of Sparta. Never did I hear Such gallant chiding; for beside the groves, The skies, the fountains, every region near, Seem'd all one mutual cry. I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder! My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flued, so sanded, and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew, Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd; like Thessalian bulls, Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouths like bells, Each under each: a cry more tunable
Was never halloo'd to, nor cheer'd with horn.
POPULAR INGRATITUDE and CURIOSITY.
• You hard hearts! You cruel men of Rome! Know ye not Pompey ? Many a time and oft Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements, To towers and windows, yea to chimney-tops, Your infants in your arms, and there have sat The live-long day with patient expectation, To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome! And when you saw his chariot but appear, Have you not made an universal shout, That Tyber trembled underneath his banks, To hear the replication of your sounds Made in his concave shores ?
- BEHOLD the African,
That traverses our vast Numidian desarts In quest of prey, and lives upon his bow : Coarse are his meals, the fortune of the chace,
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