Ev'ry word he speaks is a syren's note,
To draw the careless hearer.
Oh, while you speak, methinks a sudden calm,
In spite of all the horror that surrounds me,
Beaumont's Sea Voyage. Falls upon every frighted faculty,
And puts my soul in tune.
There is a prone and speechless dialect, Such as moves men; besides she hath prosperous art,
And wheresoe'er the subject's best, the sense Is better'd by the speaker's eloquence.
When she will play with reason and discourse, And well she can persuade.
Shaks. Mea. for Mea. The happy hours pass'd by us unperceived,
So was my soul fix'd to the soft enchantment.
Oh! I will hearken like a doting mother,
To hear her children prais'd by flatt'ring tongues.
Sir Robert Howard's Duke of Lerma.
His tongue
Thou hast a tongue to charm the wildest tempers; Dropp'd manna, and could make the worse appear Herds would forget to graze, and savage beasts Stand still, and lose their fierceness, but to hear thee,
The better reason, to perplex and dash Maturest counsels.
It was a party-coloured dress
Of patch'd and pye-ball'd languages:
"T was English cut on Greek and Latin, Like fustian heretofore on satin.
Butler's Hudibras. Oh! speak that again! Sweet as the syren's tongue those accents fall, And charm me to my ruin.
Southern's Royal Brother. When he spoke, what tender words he us'd! So softly, that, like flakes of feather'd snow, They melted as they fell
Dryden's Spanish Friar. I'll speak the kindest words That tongue e'er utter'd, or that art e'er thought. Dryden's Indian Emperor. Your words are like the notes of dying swans; Too sweet to last.
Dryden's All for Love. Methought I heard a voice, Sweet as the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains,
When all his little flock's at feed before him.
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From morn to eve have stolen unmask'd away, While mute attention hung upon his lips. Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination
Now, with fine phrase, and foppery of tongue, More graceful action, and a smoother tone, That orator of fable, and fair face,
Will steal on your brib'd hearts.
The charm of eloquence- the skill To wake each secret string,
And from the bosom's chords at will
Life's mournful music bring;
Behold the duteous son, the sire decay'd,
The o'ermast'ring strength of mind, which sways The modest matron and the blushing maid,
The haughty and the free,
Whose might earth's mightiest ones obey,
This charm was given to thee.
There's a charm in deliv'ry, a magical art, That thrills like, a kiss from the lip to the heart; 'Tis the glance—the expression-the well-chosen word
Forc'd from their homes, a melancholy train,
To traverse climes beyond the western main:
Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around,
And Niagara stuns with thund'ring sound!
E'en now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays
Through tangled forests, and through dangerous
ways;
Where beasts with man divided empire claim.
By whose magic the depths of the spirit are And the brown Indian marks with murd'rous aim
EMULATION-ENEMY - ENGAGEMENT ENGLAND.
One look, one last look,
To the cots and the towers,
To the rows of our vines
And the beds of our flowers,
To the church where the bones
Of our fathers decay'd,
Where we fondly had deem'd
That our own would be laid!
Our hearths we abandon; -
Our lands we resign;-
But, Father, we kneel
T. Babington Macaulay.
Over the Rocky Mountains' height,
Like ocean in its tided might,
The living sea rolls onward, on!
And onward on the stream shall pour,
And reach the far Pacific's shore,
And fill the plains of Oregon.
Mrs. Hale's Poems.
The axe rang sharply 'mid those forest shades,
Which from creation toward the sky had tower'd
In unshorn beauty. There, with vigorous arm,
Wrought a bold emigrant, and by his side
His little son, with question and response
Beguil'd the time.
EMULATION. (See AMBITION.)
The fine and noble way to kill a foe,
Is not to kill him: you with kindness may
So change him, that he shall cease to be so;
And then he's slain. Sigismund us'd to say
His pardons put his foes to death; for when
He mortify'd their hate, he kill'd them then.
Aleyn's Henry VII
There's not so much danger
In a known foe, as a suspected friend.
Nabb's Hannibal and Scipio
Enemies, reconcil'd,
Are like wild beasts brought up to hand; they have
More advantage given them to be cruel.
Killegrew's Conspiracy.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith,
Abhor each other. Mountains intérpos'd
Make enemies of nations, which had else
Like kindred drops been melted into one.
I never see a wounded enemy,
Or hear of foe slain on the battle-field,
But I bethink me of his pleasant home,
And how his mother and his sisters watch
For one who never more returns. Poor souls!
I've often wept to think how they must weep.
Mrs. Hale's Ormond Grosvenor.
ENGAGEMENT.-(See PROPOSAL.)
Though all things do to harm him what they can, The English nation, like the sea it governs, No greater en'my to himself than man.
Earl of Sterline. I love Dinant, mine enemy, nay, admire him; His valour claims it from me, and with justice: He that could fight thus, in a cause not honest; His sword edg'd with defence of right and honour, Would pierce as deep as lightning, with that speed
Is bold and turbulent and easily mov'd;
And always beats against the shore that bounds it
Crown's 2d part of Henry VI
We have a world within ourselves whose breast
No foreigner hath unrevenged prest
These thousand years. Tho' Rhine and Rhone
And envy Thames his never captive streams:
Yet maugre all, if we ourselves are true,
We may despise what all the earth can do.
True Trojans.
England is safe, if true within itself.
"Tis better using France, than trusting France:
Let us be back'd with God and with the seas,
Which he hath given for fence impregnable,
And with their helps only defend ourselves;
In them, and in ourselves, our safety lies.
Shaks. Henry VI. Part III.
England never did (nor never shall)
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Shaks. King John
A Hampden too is thine, illustrious land,
Wise, strenuous, firm, of unsubmitting soul,
O England!-model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart,-
What might'st thou do, that honour would thee do, Who stemm'd the torrent of a downward age
Were all thy children kind and natural!
To slavery prone, and bade thee rise again
But see thy fault! France hath in thee found out In all thy native pomp of freedom bold.
A nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
Bright at his call, the age of men effulg'd,
Of men on whom late time a kindling eye
Shall turn, and tyrants tremble while they read.
And we shall shock them; nought shall make us T is liberty crowns Britannia's Isle,
If England to itself do rest but true.
I' the world's volume
Our Britain seems as of it, but not in it;
In a great pool, a swan's nest.
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak moun-
tains smile.
Addison.
O native isle! fair freedom's happiest seat!
At thought of thee, my bounding pulses beat;
At thought of thee my heart impatient burns;
And all my country to my soul returns.
When shall I see those fields, whose plenteous grain
No pow'r can ravish from th' industrious swain?
When kiss, with pious love, the sacred earth
That gave a Burleigh or a Russell birth?
When in the shade of laws that long have stood,
Shaks. Richard II. Propt by their care or strengthen'd by their blood,—-
Of fearless independence wisely vain,
The proudest slave of Bourbon's race disdain.
Lord Littleton.
Our sea-walled garden, the whole land, Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choak'd up, Her fruit-trees all unprun'd, her hedges ruin'd, Her knots disorder'd, and her wholesome herbs Swarming with caterpillars.
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demy Paradise,
This fortress, built by nature for herself,
Against infection, and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall;
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands.
Shaks. Richard II.
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world.
Shaks. Richard II.
Britain, the queen of isles, our fair possession
Secur'd by nature, laughs at foreign force;
Her ships her bulwark, and the sea her dike,
Sees plenty in her lap, and braves the world.
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of human kind pass by;
Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,
By forms unfashion'd, fresh from nature's hand,
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,
True to imagin'd right, above control;
While e'en the peasant boasts these rights to scan,
And learns to venerate himself as man.
Goldsmith's Traveller
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still,
My country! and while yet a nook is left
Where English names and manners may be found
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy
clime
Be fickle, and thy year, most part, deform'd
Havard's King Charles I. With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,
Whether this portion of the world were rent,
By the rude ocean, from the continent,
Or thus created; it was sure design'd
To be the sacred refuge of mankind.
Waller to the Lord Protector.
Island of bliss! amid the subject seas,
That thunder round thy rocky coast, set up,
At once, the wonder, terror, and delight,
Of distant nations: Whose remotest shores
Can soon be shaken by thy naval arm;
Not to be shook thyself, but all assaults
Raffling, as thy hoar cliffs the loud sea wave.
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies
And fields without a flower, for warmer France
With all her vines; nor for Ausonia's groves
Of golden fruitage and her myrtle bowers.
Cowper's Tush.
Thee therefore still, blame-worthy as thou art,
With all thy loss of empire, and though squeezed
By public exigence, 'till annual food
Fails for the craving hunger of the state,
Thee I account still happy, and the chief
Among the nations, seeing thou art free!
My native nook of earth.
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England with all thy faults I love thee still," I said at Calais, and have not forgot it;
I like to speak and lubricate my fill;
I like the government (but that is not it);
I like the freedom of the press and quill;
I like the "Habeas Corpus" (when we've got it):
I like a parliamentary debate,
Particularly when 't is not too late;
I like the taxes, when they're not too many;
I like a sea-coal fire, when not too dear;
I like a beef-steak, too, as well as any;
Have no objection to a pot of beer;
I like the weather, when it is not rainy,
That is, I like two months of every year.
And so God save the regent, church and king!
Which means that I like all and every thing.
Our standing army, and disbanded seamen,
Poor's rate, reform, my own, the nation's debt,
Our little riots just to show we are freemen,
Our trifling bankruptcies in the gazette,
Our cloudy climate, and our chilly women,
All these I can forgive, and those forget,
And greatly venerate our recent glories,
And wish they were not owing to the tories.
The free, fair homes of England!
Long, long, in hut and hall,
May hearts of native proof be rear'd
To guard cach hallow'd wall!
And green for ever be the groves,
And bright the flowery sod,
Where first the child's glad spirit loves
Its country and its God!
A year of wandering, were it but to feel
How much our England does outweigh the world.
Miss Landon.
I love thee when I see thee stand
The hope of every other land;
A sea-mark in the tide of time,
Rearing to heaven thy brow sublime.
Thou glorious island of the sea!
So full of life and soul our joys have been,
We've almost scatter'd life to all things round us,
A thousand times I've thought the wanton pictures
Have striven to leap out of their golden frames
That held them captive, and come share with us:
A thousand times methought I've seen their mouths
Striving to break the painted shadows' bonds
That held 'em bound in everlasting silence,
And burst into a laughter and a rapture.
Crown's Henry VI. Part I.
We all are children in our strife to seize
Each petty pleasure, as it lures the sight;
And like the tall tree, swaying in the breeze,
Our lofty wishes stoop their tow'ring flight,
Till, when the prize is won, it seems no more
Than gather'd shell from ocean's countless store
And ever those, who would enjoyment gain,
Must find it in the purpose they pursue.
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