Moral essays, satires, &c

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J. French, 1777 - 195 pages
 

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Page 12 - What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme, The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam : Of smell, the headlong lioness between, And hound sagacious on the tainted green ; Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood, To that which warbles through the vernal wood. The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine ! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line...
Page 16 - Created half to rise, and half to fall: Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd; The glory jest, and riddle of the world!
Page 5 - Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan; A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot; Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.
Page 47 - Know then this truth (enough for man to know) 'Virtue alone is happiness below.
Page 52 - Let not this weak, unknowing hand Presume thy bolts to throw, And deal damnation round the land On each I judge thy foe.
Page 5 - Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; But vindicate the ways of God to man.
Page 73 - But an inferior not dependant ? worse. Offend her, and she knows not to forgive; Oblige her, and she'll hate you while you live; But die, and she'll adore you — Then the bust And temple rise — then fall again to dust.
Page 89 - Who builds a church to God, and not to Fame, Will never mark the marble with his name : Go, search it there, where to be born and die, Of rich and poor makes all the history ; Enough, that Virtue fill'd the space between ; Prov'd by the ends of being, to have been.
Page 7 - Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state : From brutes what men, from men what spirits know : Or who could suffer being here below ? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play ? Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Page 224 - Lo! at the Wheels of her Triumphal Car, Old England's Genius, rough with many a Scar, Dragg'd in the Dust! his Arms hang idly round, His Flag inverted trails along the ground! Our Youth, all liv'ry'd o'er with foreign Gold, Before her dance; behind her crawl the Old!

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