Yet Virtue will have greater claims
To love, than rank with vice combined.
And though unequal is thy fate,
Since title deck’d my higher claims
Yet envy not this gaudy state;
Thine is the pride of modest worth.
Our souls at least congenial meet,
Nor can thy lot my rank disgrace;
Our intercourse is not less sweet,
Since worth of rank supplies the place.
November 1802
Similar Posts
Since the refinement of this polish’d age
Since taste has now expunged licentious wit,Which stamp’d disgrace on all an author writ;Since now to please with purer scenes we seek,Nor dare to call the blush from Beauty’s cheek;Oh! let the modest Muse some pity claim,And meet indulgence, though she find not fame.Still, not for her alone we wish respect,Others appear more conscious of…
The world is full of orphans: firstly, those
(But many a lonely tree the loftier growsThan others crowded in the forest’s maze);The next are such as are not doomed to loseTheir tender parents in their budding days,But merely their parental tenderness,Which leaves them orphans of the heart no less.The next are ‘only children’, as they are styled,Who grow up children only, since the…
Since our Country, our God — Oh, my Sire!
Since thy triumph was brought by thy vow–Strike the bosom that’s bared for thee now!And the voice of my mourning is o’er,And the mountains behold me no more:If the hand that I love lay me low,There cannot be pain in the blow!And of this, oh, my Father! be sure–That the blood of thy child is…
Rousseau — Voltaire — our Gibbon — De Staël —
Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more,Their memory thy remembrance would recall:To them thy banks were lovely as to all,But they have made them lovelier, for the loreOf mighty minds doth hallow in the coreOf human hearts the ruin of a wallWhere dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by theeHow much more,…
‘Tu semper amoris
Friend of my youth! when young we roved,Like striplings mutually beloved,With friendship’s purest glow,The bliss which wing’d those rosy hoursWas such as pleasure seldom showersOn mortals here below.The recollectlon seems aloneDearer than all the joys I’ve known,When distant far from you:Though pain, ’tis still a pleasing pain,To trace those days and hours again,And sigh again,…
I
A boundary between the things misnamedDeath and existence: Sleep hath its own world,And a wide realm of wild reality,And dreams in their development have breath,And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,They take a weight from off waking toils,They do divide our being; they becomeA portion of…