These are the charming agonies of love,
Whose misery delights. Thomson's Seasons-Spring. While in the rosy vale Love breath'd his infant sighs, from anguish free, And full replete with bliss; save the sweet pain, That, inly thrilling, but exalts it more. And let the aspiring youth beware of love, Of the smooth glance beware; for 'tis too late, When on his heart the torrent-softness pours. Then wisdom prostrate lies, and fading fame Dissolves in air away; while the fond soul, Wrapt in gay visions of unreal bliss,
Still paints the illusive form; the kindling grace; The enticing smile; the modest-seeming eye, Beneath whose beauteous beams, belying heaven, Lurk searchless-cunning, cruelty, and death, And still, false warbling in his cheated ear, Her syren voice, inchanting, draws him on To guileful shores, and meads of fatal joy.
To love, each was to each a dearer self; Supremely happy in the awaken'd power Of giving joy. Alone, amid the shades, Still in harmonious intercourse they liv'd The rural day, and talk'd with flowing heart, Or sigh'd, and look'd unutterable things.
She felt his flame; but deep within her breast, In bashful coyness, or in maiden pride, The soft return conceal'd; save when it stole In side-long glances from her downcast eye, Or from her swelling soul in stifled sighs. Won by the charm
Of goodness irresistible, and all
In sweet disorder lost, she blush'd consent.
The dull engagements of the bustling world! Adieu the sick impertinence of praise! And hope, and action! for with her alone,
By streams and shades, to steal these sighing hours, Is all he asks, and all that Fate can give!
Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination, b. 4. Ye finer souls,
Form'd to soft luxury, and prompt to thrill With all the tumults, all the joys and pains, That beauty gives; with caution and reserve Indulge the sweet destroyer of repose, Nor court too much the queen of charming cares. For, while the cherish'd poison in your breast Ferments and maddens; sick with jealousy, Absence, distrust, or even with anxious joy, The wholesome appetites and powers of life Dissolve in languor. The coy stomach loathes The genial board; your cheerful days are gone; The generous bloom that flush'd your cheeks is fled. To sighs devoted, and to tender pains, Pensive you sit, or solitary stray,
And waste your youth in musing.
Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health, b. 4. Sweet Heaven, from such intoxicating charms, Defend all worthy breasts! not that I deem Love always dangerous, always to be shunn'd. Love well repaid, and not too weakly sunk In wanton and unmanly tenderness, Adds bloom to health; o'er ev'ry virtue sheds A gay, humane, a sweet, and generous grace, And brightens all the ornaments of man. But fruitless, hopeless, disappointed, rack'd With jealousy, fatigu'd with hope and fear, Too serious, or too languishingly fond, Unnerves the body, and unmans the soul.
It such an easy task from the fond breast To root affection out?
Capricious, wanton, bold, and brutal lust, Is meanly selfish; when resisted, cruel; And, like the blast of pestilential winds, Taints the sweet bloom of nature's fairest forms.
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, But most by lewd and lavish acts of sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose The divine property of her first being.
Lust is, of all the frailties of our nature, What most we ought to fear; the headstrong beast Rushes along, impatient of the course;
Nor hears the rider's call; nor feels the rein.
Fell luxury more perilous to youth
Than storms or quicksands, poverty or chains.
Hannah More's Belshazzar, pt. 1.
Vain end of human strength, of human skill,
Conquests, and triumph, and domain, and pomp, And ease, and luxury! O Luxury,
Bane of elated life, of affluent states,
What dreary change, what ruin is not thine ?
How doth thy bowl intoxicate the mind, To the soft entrance of thy rosy cave!
How dost thou lure the fortunate and great! Dreadful attraction! while behind thee gapes Th' unfathomable gulph where Asher lies O'erwhelmed, forgotten; and high-boasting Cham; And Elam's haughty pomp; and beauteous Greece; And the great queen of earth, imperial Rome.
There is a pleasure sure in being mad,
Which none but madmen know.
Dryden's Spanish Friar.
He raves, his words are loose
As heaps of sand, and scattering wide from sense : So high he's mounted on his airy throne, That now the wind has got into his head, And turns his brains to frenzy.
O, this poor brain! ten thousand shapes of fury Are whirling there, and reason is no more.
For ever in the pauses of his speech His lip doth work with inward mutterings, And his fixed eye is rivetted fearfully On something that no other sight can spy.
Maturin's Bertram, a. 1, s. 3. MAN.
Men are but children of a larger growth; Our appetites as apt to change as theirs, And full as craving too, and full as vain.
Trust not a man, we are by nature false, Dissembling, subtile, cruel, and inconstant ; When a man talks of love, with caution hear him, But if he swears, he'll certainly deceive thee.
How will you promise! how will you deceive!
Otway's Venice Preserved. Allure the people;
Train them by ev'ry art: poize ev'ry temper: Avarice will sell his soul: buy that and mould it. Weakness will be deluded; there, grow eloquent. Is there a tott'ring faith? grapple it fast By flatt'ry and profusely deal thy favours. Threaten the guilty. Entertain the gay.
Frighten the rich. Find wishes for the wanton: And reverence for the godly ;-Let none 'scape thee. Hill's Merope.
This vast and solid earth, that blazing sun, Those skies, thro' which it rolls, must all have end. What then is man? The smallest part of nothing. Young's Revenge, a. 4, s. 1.
The way to conquer men is by their passions; Catch but the ruling foible of their hearts, And all their boasted virtues shrink before you.
Tolson's Earl of Warwick.
Man, who madly deems himself the lord Of all, is nought but weakness and dependance. This sacred truth, by sure experience taught, Thou must have learnt, when, wandering all alone, Each bird, each insect, flitting thro' the sky,
Was more sufficient for itself than thou.
Thomson's Coriolanus, a. 2, s. 5.
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