In hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell.
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
A schoolboy’s tale, the wonder of an hour!
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction.
I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private rancour; my name, which had been a knightly or noble one, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered, and muttered, and murmured, was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me.
But ’midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world’s tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless.
If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men.
Good but rarely came from good advice.
One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine.
Yet truth will sometimes lend her noblest fires, And decorate the verse herself inspires: This fact, in virtue’s name, let Crabbe attest,- Though Nature’s sternest painter, yet the best.
Ah, happy years! once more who would not be a boy?
The very best of vineyards is the cellar.
Truth is a gem that is found at a great depth; whilst on the surface of the world all things are weighed by the false scale of custom.
Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou? Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead? Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low Some less majestic, less beloved head?
None are so desolate but something dear, Dearer than self, possesses or possess’d A thought, and claims the homage of a tear.
What want these outlaws conquerors should have but history’s purchased page to call them great?
Oh that the desert were my dwelling-place, With one fair spirit for my minister.
The Christian has greatly the advantage of the unbeliever, having everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.
With thee all tales are sweet; each clime has charms; earth – sea alike – our world within our arms.