Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 18

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William Tait, Christian Isobel Johnstone
W. Tait, 1851 - Periodicals

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Page 31 - Most ambitiously. Princes' images on their tombs do not lie, as they were wont, seeming to pray up to heaven ; but with their hands under their cheeks, as if they died of the toothache : they are not carved with their eyes fixed upon the stars; but as their minds were wholly bent upon the world, the selfsame way they seem to turn their faces.
Page 28 - Mongst quiet kindred that had nothing left By their dead parents : ' Stay,' quoth Reputation, ' Do not forsake me ; for it is 'my nature, If once I part from any man I meet, I am never found again.
Page 32 - Of what is't fools make such vain keeping? Sin their conception, their birth weeping, Their life a general mist of error, Their death a hideous storm of terror. Strew your hair with powders sweet, Don clean linen, bathe your feet, And (the foul fiend more to check) A crucifix let bless your neck : 'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day ; End your groan, and come away.
Page 31 - Didst thou ever see a lark in a cage ? Such is the soul in the body : this world is like her little turf of grass; and the heaven o'er our heads like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison.
Page 32 - Come, violent death, Serve for mandragora to make me sleep. Go tell my brothers ; when I am laid out, They then may feed in quiet.
Page 27 - To work thy discovery ; yet am now persuaded It would beget such violent effects As would damn us both. I would not for ten millions I had beheld thee : therefore use all means I never may have knowledge of thy name ; Enjoy thy lust still, and a wretched life, On that condition. — And for thee...
Page 32 - Not a whit: What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut With diamonds? or to be smothered With cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls? I know death hath ten thousand several doors For men to take their exits; and 'tis found They go on such strange geometrical hinges, You may open them both ways: any way, for Heaven sake, So I were out of your whispering.
Page 354 - The king was not allowed so much as to walk abroad on Sundays : and if at any time there had been any gaiety at court, such as dancing or playing at cards, he was severely reproved for it.
Page 408 - With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw, The George and Garter dangling from that bed Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies — alas!
Page 94 - ... which raiseth your thoughts unto old things and consideration of times before you, when even living men were antiquities ; when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world could not be properly said to go unto the greater number.

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