But I thought that I heard it strike three.
Said my friend then, ‘The blessings we always possess
We know not the want of, and prize them the less;
The church-clock was no new sound to thee.
‘A young woman, afflicted with deafness a year,
By that sound you scarce heard, first perceived she could hear;
I was near her, and saw the girl start
With such exquisite wonder, such feelings of pride,
A happiness almost to terror allied,
She showed the sound went to her heart.’
Thing from what you used to be:Once you liked to play with me,Now you leave me all alone,And are so conceited grownWith your Latin, you’ll scarce lookUpon any English book.We had used on winter evesTo con over Shakespeare’s leaves,Or on Milton’s harder senseExercise our diligence-And you would explain with easeThe obscurer passages,Find me out the…
Of them but I love, yet IWill just name them all; and tryIf there be one a little moreLoved by me than all the rest.Yes; I do think, that I love bestMy brother Henry, because heHas always been most fond of me.Yet, to be sure, there’s Isabel;I think I love her quite as well.And, I…
The peach and the nectarine, to suitEvery taste, in abundance are there.Yet all are not welcome to tasteThese kind bounties of Nature; for oneFrom her open-spread table must hasteTo make room for a more favoured son:As that wasp will soon sadly perceive,Who has feasted awhile on a plum;And, his thirst thinking now to relieve,For a…
First leaf of spring!At every lightest breath that quakest,And with a zephyr shakest;Scarce stout enough to hold thy slender form togetherIn calmest halcyon weather:Next sister to the web that spiders weave,Poor flutterers to deceiveInto their treacherous silken bed:O! how art thou sustained, how nourishëd!All trivial as thou art,Without dispute,Thou play’st a mighty part;And art the…
The spirit of a babe reposesBefore it to the body come;Or, as philosophy more wiseThinks, it descendeth from the skies,-We know the babe’s now in the roomAnd that is all which is quite clearEven to philosophy, my dear.The God that made us can aloneReveal from whence a spirit’s broughtInto young life, to light, and thought;And…
Saint Stephens’ fool, the Zany of Debate-Who nothing generous ever understood.London’s twice Prætor! scorn the fool-born jest-The stage’s scum, and refuse of the players-Stale topics against Magistrates and Mayors-City and Country both thy worth attest.Bid him leave off his shallow Eton wit,More fit to sooth the superficial earOf drunken Pitt, and that pickpocket Peer,When at…
