"While the cock with lively din Scatters the rear of darkness thin, And to the stack, or the barn door, Stoutly struts his dames before, Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn."

"Mirth, admit me of thy crew, To live with her, and live with thee, In unreprovèd pleasures free."

"The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty."

"Sport, that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter, holding both his sides. Come, and trip it, as you go. On the light fantastic toe."

"Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, Nods and becks and wreathèd smiles."

"Hence, loathèd Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy."

"Peor and Baälim Forsake their temples dim."

"From haunted spring and dale Edged with poplar pale The parting genius is with sighing sent."

"The oracles are dumb, No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell."

"Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail."

"Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold."

"No war, or battle's sound Was heard the world around. The idle spear and shield were high up hung."

"It was the winter wild While the Heav'n-born child All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies."

"This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King, Of wedded maid and virgin mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring; For so the holy sages once did sing, That He our deadly forfeit should release, And with His Father work us a perpetual peace."

"I neither oblige the belief of other person, nor overhastily subscribe mine own. Nor have I stood with others computing or collating years and chronologies, lest I should be vainly curious about the time and circumstance of things, whereof the substance is so much in doubt. By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes."

"Beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies."

"Have hung My dank and dropping weeds To the stern god of sea."

"What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste?"

"License they mean when they cry, Liberty! For who loves that must first be wise and good."

"That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp."

"That old man eloquent."

"As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye."

"Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day."

"O fairest flower! no sooner blown but blasted, Soft silken primrose fading timelessly."

"Such as may make thee search the coffers round."

"The end of learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love Him and imitate Him."

"Madam, methinks I see him living yet; So well your words his noble virtues praise, That all both judge you to relate them true, And to possess them, honour'd Margaret."

"For stories teach us, that liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery: for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need."

"Such bickerings to recount, met often in these our writers, what more worth is it than to chronicle the wars of kites or crows flocking and fighting in the air?"

"[Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; ... Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, ... as have also long since our best English tragedies, as... trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory."

"But oh! as to embrace me she inclined, I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night."

"Methought I saw my late espousèd saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave."

"Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son"

"In mirth that after no repenting draws."

"Of which all Europe rings from side to side."

"Yet I argue not Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate one jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up, and steer Right onward."

"Cyriack, whose Grandsire on the Royal Bench Of British Themis, with no mean applause Pronounced and in his volumes taught our Laws, Which others at their Bar so often wrench"

"For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor; So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed; And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of him that walked the waves."

"Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth."

"Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world."

"Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes That on the green turf suck the honied showers, And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears."

"The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said; But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."

"Blind mouths! That scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook."

"Last came, and last did go, The Pilot of the Galilean lake; Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain)."

"It was that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred head of thine."

"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil."

"Alas! what boots it with incessant care To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse? Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorrèd shears, And slits the thin-spun life."

"The gadding vine."

"But O the heavy change, now thou art gone, Now thou art gone and never must return!"

"Under the opening eyelids of the morn, We drove afield; and both together heard What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night."