AGE.

Thus aged men, full loth and slow,
The vanities of life forego,

And count their youthful follies o'er,
Till Memory lends her light no more.
Rokeby, Canto V.

SIR W. SCOTT.

Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood;
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility;
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly.

As You Like It, Act ii. Sc. 3.

SHAKESPEARE.

But grant, the virtues of a temp'rate prime
Bless with an age exempt from scorn or crime;
An age that melts with unperceived decay,
And glides in modest innocence away.
Vanity of Human Wishes.

DR. S. JOHNSON.

Who soweth good seed shall surely reap;
The year grows rich as it groweth old,

And life's latest sands are its sands of gold!

To the "Bouquet Club."

J. C. R. DORR.

The spring, like youth, fresh blossoms doth produce,
But autumn makes them ripe and fit for use:

So Age a mature mellowness doth set
On the green promises of youthful heat.
Cato Major, Pt. IV.

SIR J. DENHAM.

My May of life

Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honor, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
Macbeth, Act v. Sc. 3.
SHAKESPEARE.

What is the worst of woes that wait on age?
What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
To view each loved one blotted from life's page,
And be alone on earth as I am now.

Childe Harold, Canto II.

His silver hairs

Will purchase us a good opinion,

LORD BYRON,

And buy men's voices to commend our deeds;
It shall be said-his judgment ruled our hands.

Julius Cæsar, Act ii. Sc. 1.

SHAKESPEARE.

As you are old and reverend, you should be wise. King Lear, Act i. Sc. 4.

SHAKESPEARE.

So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop
Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease

Gathered, not harshly plucked for death mature.
Paradise Lost, Bk. XI.

MILTON.

AIR.

DUNCAN. This castle hath a pleasant seat: the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself

Unto our gentle senses.

BANQUO.

The heaven's breath

Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,

Buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird

Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, The air is delicate.

Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 6.

SHAKESPEARE.

Joyous the birds; fresh gales and gentle airs Whispered it to the woods, and from their wings Flung rose, flung odors from the spicy shrub. Paradise Lost, Bk. VIII.

MILTON.

HAMLET. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold. HORATIO. It is a nipping and an eager air.

Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 4.

SHAKESPEARE.

The parching air

Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire. Paradise Lost, Bk. II.

MILTON.

Drew audience and attention still as night
Or summer's noontide air.

Paradise Lost, Bk. II.

MILTON.

As one who long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air.

Paradise Lost, Bk. IX.

MILTON.

Nor waste their sweetness in the desert air.

Gotham, Bk. II.

C. CHURCHILL.

AMBITION.

Ambition is our idol, on whose wings
Great minds are carried only to extreme;
To be sublimely great, or to be nothing.

The Loyal Brother, Act i. Sc. 1.

T. SOUTHERNE.

To reign is worth ambition, though in hell: Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven. Paradise Lost, Bk. I.

MILTON.

Rather than be less

Cared not to be at all.

Paradise Lost, Bk. II.

MILTON.

Lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.
Julius Cæsar, Act ii. Sc. 1.

SHAKESPEARE. I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent; but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other.

Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 7.

SHAKESPEARE.

But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand, And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land. Absalom and Achitophel, Pt. I.

J. DRYDEN.

Ambition's monstrous stomach does increase
By eating, and it fears to starve unless
It still may feed, and all it sees devour.
Playhouse to Let.

SIR W. DAVENANT.

But see how oft ambition's aims are crossed, And chiefs contend 'til all the prize is lost! Rape of the Lock, Canto V.

A. POPE.

O, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains piled on mountains to the skies?
Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.

Essay on Man, Epistle IV.

A. POPE.

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

Hamlet, Act ii. S. 2.

SHAKESPEARE.

Why then doth flesh, a bubble-glass of breath,
Hunt after honour and advancement vain,
And rear a trophy for devouring death?

Ruins of Time.

E. SPENSER.

Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise
By mountains piled on mountains to the skies?
Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
Essay on Man.

A. POPE.

ANGEL.

In this dim world of clouding cares,
We rarely know, till 'wildered eyes
See white wings lessening up the skies,
The Angels with us unawares.

Ballad of Babe Christabel.

Around our pillows golden ladders rise,

And up and down the skies,

With winged sandals shod,

G. MASSEY.

The angels come, and go, the Messengers of God!
Nor, though they fade from us, do they depart―.
It is the childly heart:

We walk as heretofore,

Adown their shining ranks, but see them nevermore. Hymn to the Beautiful.

R. H. STODDARD.

For God will deign

To visit oft the dwellings of just men
Delighted, and with frequent intercourse
Thither will send his winged messengers
On errands of supernal grace.

Paradise Lost, Bk. VII.

But sad as angels for the good man's sin,
Weep to record, and blush to give it in.

The Pleasures of Hope, Pt. II.

MILTON.

T. CAMPBELL.

What though my winged hours of bliss have been, Like angel-visits, few and far between.

The Pleasures of Hope, Pt. II.

T. CAMPBELL.

ANGER.

Anger is like

A full-hot horse; who being allowed his way,

Self-mettle tires him.

King Henry VIII., Act i. Sc. 1.

SHAKESPEARE.

Being once chafed, he cannot

Be reined again to temperance; then he speaks
What's in his heart.

Coriolanus, Act iii. Sc. 3.

I am very sorry, good Horatio,

That to Laertes I forgot myself,

SHAKESPEARE.

But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me

Into a towering passion.

Hamlet, Act v. Sc. 2.

SHAKESPEARE.

Senseless, and deformed,
Convulsive Anger storms at large; or, pale
And silent, settles into fell revenge.

The Seasons: Spring.

Be advised;

J. THOMSON.

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot
That it do singe yourself: we may outrun,
By violent swiftness, that which we run at,
And lose by over-running,

King Henry VIII., Act i. Sc. 1.

SHAKESPEARE.

Never anger made good guard for itself.

Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv. Sc. 1.

ANGLING.

All 's fish they get

That cometh to net.

SHAKESPEARE.

Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry. T. TUSSER.

In genial spring, beneath the quivering shade,
Where cooling vapors breathe along the mead,
The patient fisher takes his silent stand,
Intent, his angle trembling in his hand;
With looks unmoved, he hopes the scaly breed,
And eyes the dancing cork, and bending reed.
Windsor Forest.

Now is the time,

A. POPE.

While yet the dark-brown water aids the guile,
To tempt the trout. The well-dissembled fly,
The rod fine tapering with elastic spring,
Snatched from the hoary steed the floating line,
And all thy slender wat'ry stores prepare.
The Seasons: Spring.

J. THOMSON.

Just in the dubious point, where with the pool.
Is mixed the trembling stream, or where it boils
Around the stone, or from the hollowed bank
Reverted plays in undulating flow,

There throw, nice judging, the delusive fly;
And as you lead it round in artful curve,
With eye attentive mark the springing game.
Straight as above the surface of the flood
They wanton rise, or urged by hunger leap,
Then fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook :
Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank,
And to the shelving shore slow-dragging some,
With various hand proportioned to their force.
The Seasons: Spring.

J. THOMSON.