"As soon Seek roses in December, ice in June; Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff; Believe a woman or an epitaph, Or any other thing that's false, before You trust in critics, who themselves are sore."

"Better to err with Pope, than shine with Pye."

"Oh, Amos Cottle! Phœbus! what a name!"

"'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow, And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low: So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, View'd his own feather on the fatal dart, And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart."

"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."

"Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime!"

"Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine, And all, save the spirit of man, is divine?"

"The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the music breathing from her face, 19 The heart whose softness harmonized the whole,— And oh, that eye was in itself a soul!"

"Who hath not proved how feebly words essay To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray? Who doth not feel, until his failing sight Faints into dimness with its own delight, His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess The might, the majesty of loveliness?"

"The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle."

"Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life, The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!"

"Mark! where his carnage and his conquests cease! He makes a solitude, and calls it — peace!"

"Hark! to the hurried question of despair: "Where is my child?"—an echo answers, "Where?""

"He who hath bent him o'er the dead Ere the first day of death is fled,— The first dark day of nothingness, The last of danger and distress, Before decay's effacing fingers Have swept the lines where beauty lingers."

"Such is the aspect of this shore; 'T is Greece, but living Greece no more! So coldly sweet, so deadly fair, We start, for soul is wanting there."

"Shrine of the mighty! can it be That this is all remains of thee?"

"So, we'll go no more a roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright."

"Old man! ’tis not so difficult to die."

"The heart ran o'er With silent worship of the great of old! The dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns."

"The stars are forth, the moon above the tops Of the snow-shining mountains. Beautiful! I linger yet with Nature, for the Night Hath been to me a more familiar face Than that of man; and in her starry shade Of dim and solitary loveliness, I learn'd the language of another world."

"There is no power in holy men, Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast, Nor agony—nor, greater than all these, The innate tortures of that deep despair, Which is remorse without the fear of hell, But all in all sufficient to itself Would make a hell of heaven,—can exorcise From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge Upon itself; there is no future pang Can deal that justice on the self—condemn'd He deals on his own soul."

"Whate'er I may have been, or am, doth rest between Heaven and myself; I shall not choose a mortal To be my mediator."

"Knowledge is not happiness, and science But an exchange of ignorance for that Which is another kind of ignorance."

"From my youth upwards My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men, Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes; The thirst of their ambition was not mine, The aim of their existence was not mine; My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers Made me a stranger."

"Think'st thou existence doth depend on time? It doth; but actions are our epochs: mine Have made my days and nights imperishable Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore Innumerable atoms; and one desert Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break, But nothing rests, save carcases and wrecks, Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness."

"Patience! Hence—that word was made For brutes of burthen, not for birds of prey; Preach it to mortals of a dust like thine,— I am not of thine order."

"To be thus— Grey-hair'd with anguish, like these blasted pines, Wrecks of a single winter, barkless, branchless, A blighted trunk upon a cursed root, Which but supplies a feeling to decay— And to be thus, eternally but thus, Having been otherwise! Now furrow'd o'er With wrinkles, plough'd by moments, not by years And hours—all tortured into ages—hours Which I outlive!—Ye toppling crags of ice! Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me! I hear ye momently above, beneath, Crash with a frequent conflict; but ye pass, And only fall on things that still would live."

"But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, Half dust, half deity, alike unfit To sink or soar."

"My mother Earth! And thou fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains, Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye. And thou, the bright eye of the universe, That openest over all, and unto all Art a delight—thou shin'st not on my heart."

"By thy cold breast and serpent smile, By thy unfathom'd gulfs of guile, By that most seeming virtuous eye, By thy shut soul's hypocrisy; By the perfection of thine art Which pass'd for human thine own heart; By thy delight in others' pain, And by thy brotherhood of Cain, I call upon thee! and compel Thyself to be thy proper Hell!"

"Mont Blanc is the Monarch of mountains; They crowned him long ago, On a throne of rocks — in a robe of clouds – With a Diadem of Snow."

"Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life."

"Thy Godlike crime was to be kind, To render with thy precepts less The sum of human wretchedness, And strengthen Man with his own mind; But baffled as thou wert from high, Still in thy patient energy, In the endurance, and repulse Of thine impenetrable Spirit, Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, A mighty lesson we inherit: Thou art a symbol and a sign To Mortals of their fate and force; Like thee, Man is in part divine, A troubled stream from a pure source; And Man in portions can foresee His own funereal destiny; His wretchedness, and his resistance, And his sad unallied existence: To which his Spirit may oppose Itself — and equal to all woes, And a firm will, and a deep sense, Which even in torture can decry Its own concenter'd recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory."

"Titan! to thee the strife was given Between the suffering and the will, Which torture where they cannot kill; And the inexorable Heaven, And the deaf tyranny of Fate, The ruling principle of Hate, Which for its pleasure doth create The things it may annihilate, Refused thee even the boon to die: The wretched gift eternity Was thine — and thou hast borne it well. All that the Thunderer wrung from thee Was but the menace which flung back On him the torments of thy rack; The fate thou didst so well foresee, But would not to appease him tell; And in thy Silence was his Sentence, And in his Soul a vain repentance, And evil dread so ill dissembled, That in his hand the lightnings trembled."

"Titan! to whom immortal eyes The sufferings of mortality Seen in their sad reality, Were not as things that gods despise; What was thy pity's recompense? A silent suffering, and intense; The rock, the vulture, and the chain, All that the proud can feel of pain, The agony they do not show, The suffocating sense of woe, Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless."

"And they were canopied by the blue sky, So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful That God alone was to be seen in heaven."

"A change came o'er the spirit of my dream."

"She was his life, The ocean to the river of his thoughts, Which terminated all."

"And to his eye There was but one beloved face on earth, And that was shining on him."

"And both were young, and one was beautiful."

"Sighing that Nature formed but one such man, And broke the die, in molding Sheridan."

"Who track the steps of glory to the grave."

"Folly loves the martyrdom of fame."

"When all of genius which can perish dies."

"And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!"

"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast."

"The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee."