O England!-model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart,-
A Hampden too is thine, illustrious land,
Wise, strenuous, firm, of unsubmitting soul,
What might'st thou do, that honour would thee do, Who stemm'd the torrent of a downward age
Were all thy children kind and natural!
To slavery prone, and bade thee rise again
But see thy fault! France hath in thee found out In all thy native pomp of freedom bold.
A nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills
Bright at his call, the age of men effulg'd,
Of men on whom late time a kindling eye
Shall turn, and tyrants tremble while they read.
Thomson's Seasons.
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them; nought shall make us "Tis liberty crowns Britannia's Isle,
If England to itself do rest but true.
I' the world's volume
Our Britain seems as of it, but not in it;
In a great pool, a swan's nest.
O native isle! fair freedom's happiest scat!
At thought of thee, my bounding pulses beat;
At thought of thee my heart impatient burns;
And all my country to my soul returns.
When shall I see those fields, whose plenteous grain
No pow'r can ravish from th' industrious swain?
When kiss, with pious love, the sacred earth
That gave a Burleigh or a Russell birth?
When in the shade of laws that long have stood,
Shaks. Richard II. Propt by their care or strengthen'd by their blood,——
Of fearless independence wisely vain,
The proudest slave of Bourbon's race disdain.
Lord Littleton.
Our sea-walled garden, the whole land, Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choak'd up, Her fruit-trees all unprun'd, her hedges ruin'd, Her knots disorder'd, and her wholesome herbs Swarming with caterpillars.
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demy Paradise,
This fortress, built by nature for herself,
Against infection, and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sca,
Which serves it in the office of a wall;
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands.
Shaks. Richard II.
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world.
Shaks. Richard II.
Britain, the queen of isles, our fair possession
Secur'd by nature, laughs at foreign force;
Her ships her bulwark, and the sea her dike,
Sees plenty in her lap, and braves the world.
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of human kind pass by;
Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,
By forms unfashion'd, fresh from nature's hand,
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,
True to imagin'd right, above control;
While e'en the peasant boasts these rights to scan,
And learns to venerate himself as man.
Goldsmith's Traveller
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still,
My country! and while yet a nook is left
Where English names and manners may be found
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy
Be fickle, and thy year, most part, deform'd Havard's King Charles I. With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost.
Whether this portion of the world were rent,
By the rude ocean, from the continent,
Or thus created; it was sure design'd
To be the sacred refuge of mankind.
Waller to the Lord Protector.
Island of bliss! amid the subject seas,
That thunder round thy rocky coast, set up,
At once, the wonder, terror, and delight,
Of distant nations: Whose remotest shores
Can soon be shaken by thy naval arm;
Not to be shook thyself, but all assaults
Baffling, as thy hoar cliffs the loud sea wave.
He had an English look; that is, was square
In make, of a complexion white and ruddy,
Good teeth, with curling, rather dark brown hair,
And it might be from thought, or toil, or study,
An open brow a little mark'd with care.
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· England with all thy faults I love thee still,"
I said at Calais, and have not forgot it;
I like to speak and lubricate my fill;
I like the government (but that is not it);
I like the freedom of the press and quill;
I like the "Habeas Corpus" (when we've got it):
I like a parliamentary debate,
Particularly when 't is not too late;
I like the taxes, when they're not too many;
I like a sea-coal fire, when not too dear;
I like a beef-steak, too, as well as any;
Have no objection to a pot of beer;
I like the weather, when it is not rainy,
That is, I like two months of every year.
And so God save the regent, church and king!
Which means that I like all and every thing.
Our standing army, and disbanded seamen,
Poor's rate, reform, my own, the nation's debt,
Our little riots just to show we are freemen,
Our trifling bankruptcies in the gazette,
Our cloudy climate, and our chilly women,
All these I can forgive, and those forget,
And greatly venerate our recent glories,
And wish they were not owing to the tories.
The free, fair homes of England!
Long, long, in hut and hall,
May hearts of native proof be rear'd
To guard each hallow'd wall!
And green for ever be the groves,
And bright the flowery sod,
Where first the child's glad spirit loves Its country and its God!
So full of life and soul our joys have been, We've almost scatter'd life to all things round us, A thousand times I've thought the wanton pictures Have striven to leap out of their golden frames That held them captive, and come share with us: A thousand times methought I've seen their mouths Striving to break the painted shadows' bonds That held 'em bound in everlasting silence, And burst into a laughter and a rapture.
Crown's Henry VI. Part I. We all are children in our strife to seize Each petty pleasure, as it lures the sight; And like the tall tree, swaying in the breeze,
Our lofty wishes stoop their tow'ring flight, Till, when the prize is won, it seems no more Than gather'd shell from ocean's countless store And ever those, who would enjoyment gain, Must find it in the purpose they pursue. Mrs. Hale's Poems.
Her hands were foule and dirty, never washt
In all her life, with long nayles overraught,
Like puttock's clawes, with th' one of which she
scratcht
Her cursed head, although it itched naught,
The other held a snake with venom fraught
On which she fed and gnawed hungrily,
As if that long she had not eaten aught;
That round about her jawes one might descry
The bloudie gore and poyson dropping loathsomely.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
He hated all good works and virtuous deeds;
And him no less, that any like did use:
And who with gracious bread the hungry feeds,
His alms for want of faith he doth accuse:
So every good to bad he doth abuse:
And eke the verse of famous poets' wit
He does backbite, and spiteful poison spues
From leprous mouth, on all that ever writ:
Such one vile envy was, that first in row did sit.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
Envy with a pale and meagre face (whose
Body was lean, that one might tell all
Her bones, and whose garment was so tatter'd
That it was easy to number ev'ry
Thread) stood shooting at stars, whose darts fell down
His name was, while he liv'd, above all envy, And being dead, without it.
Of what coarse metal you are moulded — envy.
How eagerly you follow my disgraces,
As if it fed ye; and how sleek and wanton
Ye appear in every thing may bring my ruin!
Jonson's Sejanus. Follow your envious courses, men of malice;
You have Christian warrant for them; and, no
For the true condition of envy, is,
Dolor alienæ felicitatis; to have
Our eyes continually fix'd upon another
Man's prosperity, that is, his chief happiness,
And to grieve at that.
In time will find their fit rewards.
Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour. My heart laments that virtue cannot live
Envy is but the smoke of low estate,
Ascending still against the fortunate.
Lord Brooke's Alaham.
Envy not greatness; for thou mak'st thereby
Thyself the worse; and so the distance greater.
Be not thine own worm: yet such jealousy
As hurts not others but makes thee better,
Is a good spur.
Out of the teeth of emulation.
Shaks. Julius Cæsar.
Base envy withers at another's joy,
And hates that excellence it cannot reach.
Thomson's Seasons.
Yet much is talk'd of bliss; it is the art
Of such as have the world in their possession,
To give it a good name, that fools may envy;
envy to small minds is flattery.
Young's Revenge.
For envy doth invade Works breathing to eternity, and cast Upon the fairest piece the greatest shade. Aleyn's Henry VII. Beneat his feet pale envy bites her chain, And snaky discord whets her sting in vain. Sir John Beaumont.
Here stood ill-nature like an ancient maid,
Her wrinkled form in black and white array'd;
With store of prayers, for mornings, nights, and
Her hands are fill'd; her bosom with lampoons. Pope's Rape of the Lock.
Cold words that hide the envious thoughts.
Who can in reason then or right assume
Monarchy over such as live by right
His equals, if in pow'r or splendour less,
In freedom equal?
O hateful error, melancholy's child!
Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men
The things that are not? O error, soon conceived,
Thou never com'st unto a happy birth,
But kill'st the mother that engender'd thee.
Shaks. Julius Cæsar.
But as a dog that turns the spit
Bestirs himself, and plies his feet
To climb the wheel, but all in vain,
Milton's Paradise Lost. His own weight brings him down again,
And still he's in the self-same place,
Where at his setting out he was.
Equal nature fashion'd us
All in one mould. The bear serves not the bear,
Nor the wolf the wolf; 't was odds of strength in
tyrants,
That pluck'd the first link from the golden chain
With which that thing of things bound in the world.
Why then, since we are taught, by their examples,
To love our liberty, if not command,
Should the strong serve the weak, the fair deform'd
ones ?
Or such as know the cause of things, pay tribute
To ignorant fools? All's but the outward gloss,
And politic form, that does distinguish us.
Massinger's Bondman.
Consider man, weigh well thy frame,
The king, the beggar are the same;
Dust form'd us all. Each breathes his day,
Then sinks into his native clay.
He was my equal at his birth,
A naked, helpless, weeping child;
And such are born to thrones on earth: On such hath every mother smiled.
My equal he will be again
Down in that cold oblivious gloom,
Where all the prostrate ranks of men
Crowd, without fellowship, the tomb.
There's nothing in the world like euquette
In kingly chambers or imperial haì.s,
As also at the race and county balls.
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