For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Poems. 253 Prediction. Experience. 27-i. 1. 255 Distrust. Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt. 5-i. 5. 256 Decaying nature of Love. 36-iv. 7. 257 Time produces ingratitude. Time hath a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes; 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. 26-iii. 3 258 The present opportunity to be taken. Take the instant way; * Careless gayety is the forerunner of calamity; vigilance, of suc. cess and permanent welfare. Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by, 26-iii. 3. 259 Farewell and Welcome. Time is like a fashionable host, 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. 26-iii. 3. 260 The praise of Virtue consists in action. 0, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was ! For beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time. 26-iii. 3. 261 Prevalence of appearances. 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 giltt o'er-dusted. 26-iii. 3. 262 Solemnity. All solemn things Should answer solemn accidents. Triumphs for nothing, and lamenting toys, f Is jollity for.apes, and grief for boys. 31-iv. 2. 263 Prosperity and Adversity. Prosperity is the very bond of love; 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-iy. 3. * New-fashioned toys. † Gold. | Trifles. 264 Refined Love. 36-iv. 5. 265 The effects of Poverty and Riches. 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.t 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. 27-iv. 3. 266 Sarcasm. 10-i. 7. 267 Wisdom and folly. To be generous, guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts, 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. * 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 re. fined, flies off after the attracting object, after the thing it loves. fi.e. Human nature, besieged as it is by miscry, admonished as it is of want and imperfection, when elevated by fortune, will despise beings of nature like its own. | 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. & Short arrows. 268 Jests. 8-v. 2. 269 Folly, its effects. New customs, 25-i. 3. 271 Fashion. Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity, (So it be new, there's no respect how vile,) That is not quickly buzz'd into the ears? 17-ii. 1. 272 Hollow friendship. The great man down, you mark, his favourite flies ; The poor advanced makes friends of enemies. And hitherto doth love on fortune tend : For who not needs, shall never lack, a friend ; And who in want a hollow friend doth try, Directly seasons him his enemy. 36-iii. 2. 273 Melancholy. Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster ? Sleep, when he wakes ? and creep into the jaundice By being peevish! 9i. 1. *These are observations worthy of a man who has surveyed hu. man nature with the closest attention. 274 Power, loss of it, is loss of homage. 'Tis certain, greatness, once fallen out with fortune, Must fall out with men too: What the declined is, He shall as soon read in the eyes of others, As feel in his own fall: for men, like butterflies, Show not their mealy wings, but to the summer; And not a man, for being simply man, Hath any honour; but honour for those honours That are without him, as place, riches, favour, Prizes of accident as oft as merit: Which when they fall, as being slippery standers, The love that lean'd on them as slippery too, Do one pluck down another, and together Die in the fall. 26-iii. 3. [ing; 275 Love, in its spring and in its maturity. My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seemI love not less, though less the show appear : That love is merchandised, whose rich esteeming The owner's tongue doth publish every where. Our love was new, and then but in the spring, When I was wont to greet it with my lays; As Philomel in summer's front doth sing, And stops his pipe in growth of riper days; Not that the summer is less pleasant now Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, But that wild music burdens every bough, And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. Poems. 276 Conscience. Who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin ? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life; But that the dread of something after death,The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns -puzzles the will; And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of? |