Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

'Tis good for men to love their present pains,
Upon example; so the spirit is eased:
And, when the mind is quicken'd, out of doubt,
The organs, though defunct and dead before,
Break up their drowsy grave, and newly move
With casted slough and fresh legerity.w

244

Energy.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,

20-iv. 1.

Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only, doth backward pull
Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.

215

Fortitude in trials.

Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss,

11-i. 1.

But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.
What though the mast be now blown over-board,
The cable broke, the holding anchor lost,
And half our sailors swallow'd in the flood?
Yet lives our pilot still: Is 't meet, that he
Should leave the helm, and, like a fearful lad,
With tearful eyes, add water to the sea,

And give more strength to that which hath too much;
Whiles, in his moan, the ship splits on the rock,
Which industry and courage might have saved?

246

Grief unavailing.

23-v. 4.

When remedies are past, the griefs are ended,
By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended.
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone,
Is the next way to draw new mischief on.
What cannot be preserved when fortune takes,
Patience her injury a mockery makes.

[thief;

The robb'd, that smiles, steals something from the He robs himself, that spends a bootless grief.

[blocks in formation]

Men at some time are masters of their fates;

37-i. 3.

The fault is not in our stars,

But in ourselves.

w Lightness, nimbleness.

29-i. 2.

248

Delays dangerous.

That we would do,

We should do when we would; for this would changes,
And hath abatements and delays as many,

As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this should is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.

249

Patience.

How poor are they, that have not patience!-
What wound did ever heal, but by degrees?

250

Evils, wrongly ascribed to Heaven.

36-iv. 7.

37-ii. 3.

This is the excellent foppery of the world! that, when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools, by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on.

251

X

Death.

34-i. 2.

How oft, when men are at the point of death,
Have they been merry? which their keepers2 call
A lightning before death.

252

The influence of infection.

35-v. 3.

They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do shew,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die;

But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:

x Traitors.

y James i. 13, 14.

z Attendants.

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

[blocks in formation]

Against ill chances, men are ever merry;
But heaviness foreruns the good event.a

[blocks in formation]

Our own precedent passions do instruct us
What levity's in youth.

255

Poems.

19-iv. 2.

27-i. l.

Distrust.

Our doubts are traitors,

And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.

256

Decaying nature of Love.

There lives within the very flame of love

A kind of wick, or snuff, that will abate it;
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too-much.

257

Time produces ingratitude.

Time hath a wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes;

5-i. 5.

36-iv. 7.

Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done: Perseverance

Keeps honour bright: To have done, is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery.

258

The present opportunity to be taken.

26-iii. 3.

Take the instant way;

For honour travels in a strait so narrow,

Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;
For emulation hath a thousand sons,

That one by one pursue: If you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,

a Careless gaiety is the forerunner of calamity; vigilance, of success and permanent welfare.

Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost;-

Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O'er-run and trampled on.

[blocks in formation]

Time is like a fashionable host,

26-iii. 3.

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand; And with his arms out-stretch'd, as he would fly, Grasps-in the comer: Welcome ever smiles,

And farewell goes out sighing.

260 The praise of Virtue consists in action.

O, let not virtue seek

Remuneration for the thing it was!

For beauty, wit,

26-iii. 3.

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.

261

Prevalence of appearances.

26-iii. 3.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,That all, with one consent, praise new-born gawds," Though they are made and moulded of things past; And give to dust, that is a little gilt,

More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.

[blocks in formation]

All solemn things

Should answer solemn accidents.

26-iii. 3.

Triumphs for nothing, and lamenting toys,a·
Is jollity for apes, and grief for boys.

[blocks in formation]

31-iv. 2.

Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together

Affliction alters.

One of these is true:

I think affliction may subdue the cheek,
But not take in the mind.

13-iv. 3.

b New-fashioned toys.

c Gold.

d Trifles.

[blocks in formation]

Nature is fine in love: and, where 'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.

265

The effects of Poverty and Riches.

36-iv. 5.

Twinn'd brothers of one womb,

Whose procreation, residence, and birth,

Scarce is dividant,-touch them with several fortunes; The greater scorns the lesser: Not nature,

To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune,
But by contempt of nature."

Raise me this beggar, and denude that lord;
The senator shall bear contempt hereditary,
The beggar native honour.

It is the pasture lards the browser's sides,
The want that makes him lean.

[blocks in formation]

He, that a fool doth very wisely hit,
Doth very foolishly, although he smart,
Not to seem senseless of the bob: if not,
The wise man's folly is anatomized

27—iv. 3.

Even by the squand'ring glances of the fool.g

267

Wisdom and Folly.

10-ii. 7.

To be generous, guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts,h that you deem cannon-bullets. There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove. 4-i. 5.

e Love is the passion by which nature is most exalted and refined; and as substances refined and subtilized easily obey any impulse, or follow any attraction, some part of nature, so purified and refined, flies off after the attracting object, after the thing it loves.

fi.e. Human nature, besieged as it is by misery, admonished as it is of want and imperfection, when elevated by fortune, will despise beings of nature like its own.

g Unless men have the prudence not to appear touched with the sarcasms of a jester, they subject themselves to his power; and the wise man will have his folly anatomized, i.e. dissected and laid open, by the squandering glances or random shots of a fool.

h Short arrows.

« PreviousContinue »