Of Chesterton, In the County of Huntingdon, Esquire How blessed is he, who leads a Country Life, Unvex’d with anxious Cares, and void of Strife! Who studying Peace, and shunning Civil Rage, Enjoy’d his Youth, and now enjoys his Age:
Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools. Whatever Nature has in worth denied, She gives in large recruits of needful pride; For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find What wants in blood and spirits, swell'd with wind; Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, And fills up all the mighty void of sense! If once right reason drives that cloud away, Truth breaks upon us with resistless day; Trust not yourself; but your defects to know, Make use of ev'ry friend—and ev'ry foe.
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour; The heavy white limbs, and the cruel Red mouth like a venomous flower; When these are gone by with their glories, What shall rest of thee then, what remain, O mystic and sombre Dolores, Our Lady of Pain?
Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin; But thy sins, which are seventy times seven, Seven ages would fail thee to purge in, And then they would haunt thee in heaven: Fierce midnights and famishing morrows, And the loves that complete and control
Nothing so true as what you once let fall, "Most Women have no Characters at all." Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, And best distinguish'd by black, brown, or fair.
How many pictures of one nymph we view, All how unlike each other, all how true! Arcadia's Countess, here, in ermin'd pride,
I Beyond the hollow sunset, ere a star Take heart in heaven from eastward, while the west, Fulfilled of watery resonance and rest, Is as a port with clouds for harbour bar To fold the fleet in of the winds from far That stir no plume now of the bland sea's breast:
II Above the soft sweep of the breathless bay Southwestward, far past flight of night and day, Lower than the sunken sunset sinks, and higher Than dawn can freak the front of heaven with fire, My thought with eyes and wings made wide makes way To find the place of souls that I desire.
My God, I heard this day That none doth build a stately habitation But he that means to dwell therein. What house more stately hath there been, Or can be, than is man, to whose creation All things are in decay?
Who is your lady of love, O ye that pass Singing? and is it for sorrow of that which was That ye sing sadly, or dream of what shall be? For gladly at once and sadly it seems ye sing. — Our lady of love by you is unbeholden; For hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor lips, nor golden Treasure of hair, nor face nor form; but we That love, we know her more fair than anything.
— Is she a queen, having great gifts to give? — Yea, these; that whoso hath seen her shall not live Except he serve her sorrowing, with strange pain, Travail and bloodshedding and bitterer tears; And when she bids die he shall surely die. And he shall leave all things under the sky
High in the breathless Hall the Minstrel sate, And Emont's murmur mingled with the Song.— The words of ancient time I thus translate, A festal strain that hath been silent long:—
"From town to town, from tower to tower, The red rose is a gladsome flower. Her thirty years of winter past,
Before our lives divide for ever, While time is with us and hands are free, (Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea) I will say no word that a man might say Whose whole life's love goes down in a day; For this could never have been; and never, Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.
Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour, To think of things that are well outworn? Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower, The dream foregone and the deed forborne? Though joy be done with and grief be vain, Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
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