134

CONSCIENCE-DUTY.

17. Conscience, what art thou? thou tremendous power!
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?

YOUNG'S Brothers.

18. Who does the best his circumstance allows, Does well, acts nobly-angels could no more.

YOUNG'S Night Thoughts.

19. The sly informer minutes ev'ry fault, And her dread diary with horror fills.

20.

YOUNG'S Night Thoughts.

Can deal that justice on the self-condemn'd,

There is no future pang,

23. 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'S Don Juan.

24. But, at sixteen, the conscience rarely gnaws
So much, as when we call our old debts in
At sixty years, and draw the account of evil,
And find a deuced balance with the devil.

BYRON'S Don Juan.

25. So much the better:-I may stand alone,
But would not change my free-will for a throne.

BYRON'S Don Juan.

28. Yet still there whispers the small voice within,
Heard thro' gain's silence, and o'er glory's din;
Whatever creed be taught, or land be trod,
Man's conscience is the oracle of God.

BYRON'S Island.

29. That savage spirit, which would lull by wrath
Its desperate escape from duty's path;
For ne'er can man his conscience all assuage,
Unless he drain the wine of passion-rage.

30. Not all the glory, all the praise,

That decks the prosperous hero's days,
The shout of men, the laurel crown,
The pealing echoes of renown,
May conscience's dreadful sentence drown.

31. Possessions vanish, and opinions change,
And passion holds a fluctuating seat,
But, subject neither to eclipse nor wane,
Duty remains.

BYRON'S Island.

MRS. HOLFORD.

32. Trust me, no tortures which the poets feign
Can match the fierce, the unutterable pain
He feels, who, night and day devoid of rest,
Carries his own accuser in his breast.

WORDSWORTH.

GIFFORD'S Juvenal.

33. How awful is that hour when conscience stings
The hoary wretch, who on his death-bed hears,
Deep in his soul, the thundering voice that wrings,
In one dark, damning moment, crimes of years!

J. G. PERCIVAL.

136

CONSENT-REFUSAL.

34. This kills his pleasure all the day,
This thought destroys his nightly rest;
Go where he will, 't is in his way,
To him a loathsome, hated pest.

J. T. WATSON.

1.

CONSENT-REFUSAL.

I cannot love him:

Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,
Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth,
In voices well divulg'd, learned, and valiant,
And, in dimensions and the shape of nature,
A gracious person: but yet I cannot love him.

Do I not in plainest truth

SHAKSPEARE.

2.

Tell you-I do not, nor I cannot love you?

SHAKSPEARE.

3. He might have took his answer long ago.

SHAKSPEARE.

4. Repulse upon repulse met ever—

Yet gives not o'er, tho' desperate of success.

MILTON.

5. If you oblige me suddenly to choose,

My choice is made—and I must you refuse.

DRYDEN.

6. Take my esteem, if you on that can live; But, frankly, sir, 't is all I have to give.

DRYDEN.

7.

Love is not in our power,

Nay, what seems stranger, is not in our choice;
We only love where fate ordains we should,
And, blindly fond, oft slight superior merit.

FROWDE.

8. 'Twas whisper'd balm-'t was sunshine spoken!

MOORE.

9. I strove not to resist so sweet a flame,

But gloried in a happy captive's name;

Nor would I now, would love permit, be free!

10. My heart with love is beating,

Transported by your eyes;

Alas! there's no retreating,
In vain a captive flies.

LORD LYTTLETON.

11. I've rich ones rejected, and fond ones denied, But, take me, fond shepherd,-I'm thine.

12. Oh, do not talk to me of love,

"Tis deepest cruelty to me

Why throw a net around the bird

MCNEIL.

That might be happy, light and free?

WESTMACOTT.

13. Now what could artless Jennie do?

She had na' will to say him na';
At length she blush'd a sweet consent,
And love was ay between them twa.

But constant, he were perfect; that one error

Fills him with faults; makes him run through all sins.

2. I am constant as the northern star,

Of whose true, fix'd, and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.

SHAKSPEARE.

SHAKSPEARE.

138

CONSTANCY - INCONSTANCY,

3. Go, bid the needle its dear North forsake,

To which with trembling reverence it doth bend;
Go, bid the stones a journey upwards make;

Go, bid th' ambitious flames no more ascend;
And when these false to their old motions prove,
Then will I cease thee, thee alone to love.

4. Perhaps this cruel nymph well knows to feign
Forbidding speech, coy looks, and cold disdain,
To raise his passion: Such are female arts,
To hold in safer snares inconstant hearts.

COWLEY.

GAY'S Dione.

5. True constancy no time, no power can move,
He that hath known to change, ne'er knew to love.

6. Yes, let the eagle change his plume,

The leaf its hue, the flower its bloom,
But ties around that heart were spun,
Which would not, could not be undone.

7. Sooner shall the blue ocean melt to air, Sooner shall earth resolve itself to sea, Than I resign thine image, Oh my fair!

Or think of any thing, excepting thee.

GAY'S Dione.

CAMPBELL.

BYRON'S Don Juan.

8. Love bears within itself the very germ

Of change; and how should this be otherwise?
That violent things more quickly find a term
Is shown through nature's whole analogies.

9. Then fare thee well-I'd rather make

My bower upon some icy lake,
When thawing suns begin to shine,
Than trust to love so false as thine!

BYRON'S Don Juan.

MOORE.