Such joy ambition finds.
Back to thy punishment, False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings.
Till old experience do attain To something like prophetic strain.
Execute their airy purposes.
Lords are lordliest in their wine.
Goodness thinks no ill Where no ill seems.
Rather than be less Car’d not to be at all.
Thus I set my printless feet O’er the cowslip’s velvet head, That bends not as I tread.
Man hath his daily work of body or mind Appointed, which declares his dignity, And the regard of Heav’n on all his ways.
The bird of Jove, stoop’d from his aery tour, Two birds of gayest plume before him drove.
Sweetest Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv’st unseen Within thy airy shell, By slow Meander’s margent green, And in the violet-embroidered vale.
Eloquence the soul, song charms the senses.
What boots it at one gate to make defence, And at another to let in the foe?
Knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled.
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies, O worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!
This is servitude, To serve the unwise.
Most men admire Virtue who follow not her lore.
So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity, That, when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lacky her, Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt.
Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.
How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabb.