A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests.
I saw myself the lambent easy light Gild the brown horror, and dispel the night.
The Jews, a headstrong, moody, murmuring race.
Virgil, above all poets, had a stock which I may call almost inexhaustible, of figurative, elegant, and sounding words.
By viewing nature, nature’s handmaid art, Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow: Thus fishes first to shipping did impart, Their tail the rudder, and their head the prow.
The wretched have no friends.
So poetry, which is in Oxford made An art, in London only is a trade.
I am resolved to grow fat, and look young till forty.
My right eye itches, some good luck is near.
What I have left is from my native spring; I’ve still a heart that swells, in scorn of fate, And lifts me to my banks.
Government itself at length must fall To nature’s state, where all have right to all.
From plots and treasons Heaven preserve my years, But save me most from my petitioners. Unsatiate as the barren womb or grave; God cannot grant so much as they can crave.
And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow.
The unhappy man, who once has trail’d a pen, Lives not to please himself, but other men; Is always drudging, wastes his life and blood, Yet only eats and drinks what you think good.
For every inch that is not fool, is rogue.
Railing in other men may be a crime, But ought to pass for mere instinct in him: Instinct he follows and no further knows, For to write verse with him is to transprose.
And that one hunting, which the Devil design’d For one fair female, lost him half the kind.
The soft complaining flute, In dying notes, discovers The woes of hopeless lovers.
A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch’s wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging; but to makea malefactordiesweetly was only belonging toher husband.
Much malice mingled with a little wit Perhaps may censure this mysterious writ.