COMET-COMFORT-COMMONWEALTH-COMPANY-COMPASSION.
Hast thou ne'er seen the comet's flaming flight?
Th' illustrious stranger passing, terror sheds
On gazing nations, from his fiery train
Of length enormous, takes his ample round
Through depths of ether; coasts unnumber'd
worlds,
Of more than solar glory; doubles wide
Heaven's mighty cape; and then revisits earth,
From the long travel of a thousand years.
Young's Night Thoughts.
Lone traveller through the fields of air,
What may thy presence here portend?
Art come to greet the planets fair,
As friend greets friend?
Whate'er thy purpose, thou dost teach
Some lessons to the humble soul;
Though far and dim thy pathway reach,
Yet still thy goal
'Tends to the fountain of that light
From whence thy golden beams are won; So should we turn, from earth's dark night, To God our sun.
So dying men receive vain comforts
From those visitants they love, when they
Persuade them to be patient at the loss of life,
With saying they are mortal too, and mean
T'endure the like calamity; as if
To die were from good fellowship, from free
Intent t' accompany departing friends,
When such last courtesy proceeds not from
Their will, but nature's obstinate decree.
Sir W. Davenant's Fair Favourite,
Your comforts
Come as in draughts the elemental dew
Does on the earth; it wets, but leaves no moisture
To give the sear'd plants growth.
Clapthorne's Albertus Wallenstein.
Comfort cannot soothe
The heart whose life is centred in the thought
Of happy loves, once known, and still in hope,
Living with a consuming energy.
There is a heaven yet to rest my soul on
In midst of all unhappiness, which I look on
With the same comfort, as a distress'd seaman
A far off views the coast he would enjoy,
When yet the seas do toss his reeling bark,
"Twixt hope and danger.
Shirley's Maid's Revenge.
How can your griefs
Expect comfort from him, who knows not how He can redress his own?
Sir W. Davenant's Unfortunate Lover.
For in a dearth of comforts, we are taught
To be contented with the least.
Sir W. Davenant's Fair Favourite.
COMPLIMENTS-CONCEALMENT-CONCEIT-CONFIDENCE-CONSCIENCE. 77
O say, why age, and grief, and pain,
Shall long to go, but long in vain;
Why vice is left to mock at time,
And, grey in years, grow grey in crime;
While youth, that every eye makes glad,
And beauty, all in radiance clad,
And goodness, cheering every heart,
Come, but come only to depart;
Sunbeams, to cheer life's wintry day—
Sunbeams, to flash, then fade away.
Come, now again thy woes impart,
Tell all thy sorrows, all thy sin; We cannot heal the throbbing heart, Till we discern the wounds within.
And is there none with me to share The glories of the earth and sky? The eagle through the pathless air Is follow'd by one burning eye.
This self-conceit is a most dangerous shelf,
Where many have made shipwreck unawares :
He who doth trust too much unto himself,
Can never fail to fall in many snares.
Earl of Sterline's Crassus.
A strong conceit is rich; so most men deem:
If not to be, 'tis comfort yet to seem. /
Marston's Antonio and Mellida.
Drawn by conceit from reason's plan,
Sprague. How vain is that poor creature, man!
How pleas'd is ev'ry paltry clf
To prate about that thing, himself.
And with a heart new fir'd I follow you,
To do I know not what. But it sufficeth,
O. W. Holmes. That Brutus leads me on.
Banish all compliments, but single truth,
From ev'ry tongue, and ev'ry shepherd's heart,
Let them use still persuading, but no art.
Beaumont and Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess.
Treachery oft lurks
In compliments. You have sent so many posts
Of undertakings, they outride performance;
And make me think your fair pretences aim
At some intended ill, which my prevention
Must strive to avert.
Nabb's Tottenham Court.
Marry, their wits were not so changeable
As their faces, and having but one suit
Of compliment, and that not unfashionable,
They were fain to supply it with legs and silence.
Killegrew's Conspiracy.
When stranger stranger met upon the way,
First, each to each bow'd most respectfully,
And large profession made of humble service,
And then the stranger took the other's purse,
And he that stabb'd his neighbour to the heart,
Stabb'd him politely, and return'd the blade
Reeking into its sheath with graceful air.
CONCEALMENT. (See SECRESY.)
Conceit in weakest bodies, strongest works.
Shaks. Hamlet.
I took him for the plainest harmless't creature, That breath'd upon the earth a Christian; Made him my book, wherein my soul recorded The history of all my secret thoughts.
Shaks. Richard III. Thou know'st how fearless is my trust in thee. Miss Landon. 'Trust in thee?' Ay, dearest, there's no one but must,
Unless truth be a fable, in such as thee trust!
For who can see heaven's own hue in those eyes,
And doubt that truth with it came down from the
skies;
While each thought of thy bosom, like morning's young light,
Almost ere 't is born, flashes there on his sight! C. F. Hoffman.
When tyrannizing pain shall stop
The passage of thy breath,
And thee compel to swear thyself,
True servant unto death:
Then shall one virtuous deed impart
More pleasure to thy mind,
Than all the treasures that on earth,
Ambitious thoughts can find.
The well-spent time of one short day,
One hour, one moment then,
Shall be more sweet than all the joys
Amongst us mortal men.
Then shalt thou find but one refuge Which comfort can retain :
A guiltless conscience pure and clear From touch of sinful stain.
Brandon's Octavia to Antonius. Consider all thy actions, and take heed On stolen bread, tho' it is sweet, to feed Sin, like a bee, unto thy hive may bring A little honey, but expect the sting. Thou may'st conceal thy sin by cunning art, But conscience sits a witness in thy heart; Which will disturb thy peace, thy rest undo, For that is witness, judge, and prison too.
Watkins. Conscience is but a word that cowards use, Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe. Shaks. Richard III. My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain. Shaks. Richard III. Oh-I have pass'd a miserable night, So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights, That, as I am a Christian faithful man, I would not spend another such a night, Though 't were to buy a world of happy days: So full of dismal terror was the time.
Shaks. Richard III.
O, Brackenbury, I have done these things,
That now give evidence against my soul.
Shaks. Richard III.
It is a dang'rous
Thing, it makes a man a coward: a man
Cannot steal but it accuseth him; a man
Cannot swear, but it checks him.
"Tis a blushing shame-fac'd spirit, that
Mutinies in a man's bosom; it fills
One full of obstacles. It made me once
Restore a purse of gold, that by chance I
Found. It beggars any man that keeps it.
It is turn'd out of towns and cities for
A dang'rous thing; and every man that means
To live well, endeavours to trust to himself,
And live without it.
I feel within me
A peace above all earthly dignities,
A still and quiet conscience.
Shaks. Henry VIII.
He that has light within his own dear breast,
May sit i' th' centre, and enjoy bright day:
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
Himself is his own dungeon.
Conscience, what art thou? thou tremendour
Who dost inhabit us without our leave;
And art within ourselves, another self,
A master-self, that loves to domineer,
And treat the monarch frankly as the slave:
How dost thou light a torch to distant deeds?
Make the past, present, and the future frown?
How, ever and anon, awake the soul,
Milton's Comus. As with a peal of thunder, to strange horrors,
In this long restless dream, which idiots hug—
Nay, wise men flatter with the name of life.
Young's Brothers.
Conscience, and nice scruples
Reserv'd him to more wrath; for now the thought,
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain,
Torments him
Milton's Paradise Lost. Are taxes that abound in none but meagre soils,
Butler's Hudibras. Oh! conscience! conscience! man's most faithful
Pope's Moral Essays. Yet still there whispers the small voice within,
See, from behind her secret stand,
The sly informer minutes ev'ry fault,
And her dread diary with horror fills.
Young's Night Thoughts.
Heard through God's silence, and o'er glory's diu
Whatever creed be taught or land be trod,
Man's conscience is the oracle of God!
That I do wrong, I feel a thousand fears
Which are not ominous of right.
With peace of conscience, like to innocent men.
Massinger
Trust me, no tortures which the poets feign
Byron's Heaven and Earth. Part I. Can match the fierce, unutterable pain
But at sixteen the conscience rarely gnaws
So much as when we call our old debts in
At sixty years, and draw the accounts of evil,
And find a deuced balance with the devil.
A quiet conscience makes one so serene!
Christians have burnt each other quite persuaded
That all the apostles would have done as they did.
Byron.
The mind, that broods o'er guilty woes,
Is like the scorpion girt by fire,
In circle narrowing as it glows,
The flames around their captive close,
Till inly search'd by thousand throes,
And maddening in her ire,
One and sole relief she knows,
The sting she nourish'd for her foes,
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain,
And darts into her desperate brain.
So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like scorpion girt by fire;
So writhes the mind remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoom'd for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death!
He feels, who night and day devoid of rest,
Carries his own accuser in his breast.
He cannot look on her mild eye;
Her patient words his spirit quell,
Within that evil heart there lie
The hates and fears of hell.
His speech is short; he wears a surly brow-
There's none will hear her shriek; what fear ye
He fears not dying-'t is a deeper fear,—
The thunder-peal cries to his conscience—"Hear!"
The rushing winds from memory lift the veil,
And in each flash his sins, like spectres pale,
Freed, from their dark abode, his guilty breast,
Shriek in his startled ear-"Death is not rest!"
Mrs. Hale.
Sham'st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,
When evils are most free? O, then by day,
Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough
To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none,
conspiracy,
Hide it in smiles and affability:
For if thou put thy native semblance on,
Not Erebus itself were dim enough,
To hide thee from prevention.
Shaks. Julius Cæsar.
Between the acting of a dreadful thing,
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream;
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of a man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.
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