This is to be along; this, this is solitude!
Admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep for here There is such matter for all feelings: Man! Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear.
And wrinkles, the damned democrats, won’t flatter.
Tis the perception of the beautiful, A fine extension of the faculties, Platonic, universal, wonderful, Drawn from the stars, and filtered through the skies, Without which life would be extremely dull.
Never to talk to ones self is a form of hypocrisy.
Physicians mend or end us, Secundum artem; but although we sneer – In health – when ill we call them to attend us, Without the least propensity to jeer.
Such hath it been – shall be – beneath the sun The many still must labour for the one.
Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, For there thy habitation is the heart – The heart which love of thee alone can bind; And when thy sons to fetters are consign’d – To fetters and damp vault’s dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom.
Marriage, from love, like vinegar from wine – A sad, sour sober beverage – by time Is sharpened from its high celestial flavor Down to a very homely household savor.
Few things surpass old wine; and they may preach Who please, the more because they preach in vain.
The image of Eternity – the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
There’s not a sea the passenger e’er pukes in, Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.
Have not all past human beings parted, And must not all the present, one day part?
Sorrow preys upon Its solitude, and nothing more diverts it From its sad visions of the other world Than calling it at moments back to this. The busy have no time for tears.
So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like scorpion girt by fire; So writhes the mind remorse hath riven, Unfit for earth, undoom’d for heaven, Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death.
Nothing so fretful, so despicable as a Scribbler, see what I am, and what a parcel of Scoundrels I have brought about my ears, and what language I have been obliged to treat them with to deal with them in their own way; – all this comes of Authorship.
But beef is rare within these oxless isles; Goat’s flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton; And, when a holiday upon them smiles, A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on.
A material resurrection seems strange and even absurd except for purposes of punishment, and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong, and when the World is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer?
O ye! who teach the ingenious youth of nations, Holland, France, England, Germany or Spain, I pray ye flog them upon all occasions, It mends their morals, never mind the pain.
Tis pleasing to be school’d in a strange tongue By female lips and eyes – that is, I mean, When both the teacher and the taught are young, As was the case, at least, where I have been; They smile so when one’s right; and when one’s wrong They smile still more.