When evening comes, the glory of the morn,
The youthful warrior is a clod of clay.
From early youth, war has my mistress been,
And though a rugged one, I'll constant prove,
And not forsake her now. There may be joys
Which, to the strange o'erwhelming of the soul,
Visit the lover's breast beyond all others :
E'en now, how dearly do I feel there may!
But what of them? they are not made for me-
The hasty flashes of contending steel
Must serve instead of glances from my love,
And for soft breathing sighs the cannon's roar.
Joanna Baillie's Basil, a. 1, s. 2.
I died no felon death
A warrior's weapon freed a warrior's soul.
Maturin's Bertram, a. 5, s. 3.
I hate its noise and stiff parade, its blank
And empty forms, and stately courtesy,
Where between bows and blows, a smile and stab,
There's scarce a moment. Soldiers always live
In idleness or peril: both are bad.
Proctor's Mirandola, a. 1, s. 1.
A mere soldier, a mere tool, a kind
Of human sword in a friend's hand: the other
Is master-mover of his warlike puppet.
Byron's Sardanapalus, a. 5, s. 1.
His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great admiral, were but a wand.
Milton's Paradise Lost, b. 1.
Some, for hard masters, broken under arms,
In battle lopt away, with half their limbs,
Beg bitter bread thro' realms their valour sav'd.
Young's Night Thoughts, n. 1.
See, her generous troops,
Whose pay was glory, and their best reward
Free for their country and for me to die,
Ere mercenery murder grew a trade.
'Tis universal soldiership has stabb'd The heart of merit in the meaner class.
To swear, to game, to drink, to shew at home
By lewdness, idleness, and sabbath-breach,
The great proficiency he made abroad,
T' astonish and to grieve his gazing friends,
To break some maiden's and his mother's heart,
To be a pest where he was useful once,
Are his sole aim, and all his glory now.
But such better thoughts
Will pass away, how soon! and those who here
Are following their dead comrade to the grave,
Ere the night fall, will in their revelry
Quench all remembrance. From the ties of life
Unnaturally rent, a man who knew
No resting place, no dear delights of home,
Belike who never saw his children's face,
Whose children knew no father; he is gone,
Dropt from existence, like the withered leaf
That from the summer tree is swept away,
Its loss unseen. She hears not of his death
Who bore him, and already for her son
Her tears of bitterness are shed: when first
He had put on the livery of blood,
She wept him dead to her.
I sat me down to watch upon a bank
With ivy canopied, and interwove
With flaunting honeysuckle, and began,
Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy,
To meditate my rural minstrelsy,
Till fancy had her fill.
Then horrid silence follow'd, broke alone
By the low murmurs of the restless deep,
Mixt with the doubtful breeze, that now and then
Sigh'd thro' the mournful woods.
Thomson's Agamemnon, a. 3, s. 1.
To follow through the night the moving moon,
The stars and their developement; or catch
The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim;
Or to look, list'ning, on the scattered leaves,
While Autumn winds were at their evening song.
These were my pastimes, and to be alone;
For if the beings, of whom I was one,-
Hating to be so,-cross'd me in my path,
I felt myself degraded back to them,
And was all clay again. Byron's Manfred, a. 2, s. 2. Alone, for other creature in this place
Living or lifeless to be found was none.
Milton's Paradise Lost, b. 3.
In solitude
What happiness, who can enjoy alone,
Or all enjoying, what contentment find?
For solitude is sometimes best society,
And short retirement urges sweet return.
O! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought,
Lost to the noble sallies of the soul!
Who think it solitude to be alone.
Young's Night Thoughts, n, 3.
Majestic woods, of every vigorous green,
Stage above stage, high waving o'er the hills;
Or to the far horizon wide diffus'd,
A boundless deep immensity of shade.
Thomon's Seasons.-Summer.
Thus solitary, and in pensive guise,
Oft let me wander o'er the russet mead,
And thro' the sadden'd grove, where scarce is heard
One dying strain, to cheer the woodman's toil.
Ibid.-Autumn.
Oh bear me then to vast embowering shades,
To twilight groves, and visionary vales;
To weeping grottoes, and prophetic glooms;
Where angel-forms athwart the solemn dusk,
Tremendous sweep, or seem to sweep along;
And voices more than human, thro' the void
Deep-sounding, seize the enthusiastic ear!
The forest deepens round;
And more gigantic still th' impending trees
Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom.
Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health, b. 2.
Oh! who can tell the unspeakable misery
Of solitude like this!
No sound hath ever reach'd my ear
Save of the passing wind.
The fountain's everlasting flow,
The forest in the gale,
The pattering of the shower,
Sounds dead and mournful all.
Is not the mighty mind, that son of heaven!
By tyrant life dethron'd, imprison'd, pain'd?
By death enlarg'd, ennobled, deify'd?
Death but entombs the body; life the soul.
Young's Night Thoughts, n. 3.
Life is the triumph of our mould'ring clay;
Death of the spirit infinite! divine!
There is, they say, (and I believe there is,)
A spark within us of th' immortal fire,
That animates and moulds the grosser frame;
And when the body sinks, escapes to heaven.
Its native seat, and mixes with the gods.
Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health, b. 4.
SPRING.
Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.
Thomson's Seasons-Spring.
And see where surly Winter passes off,
Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts:
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
The shatter'd forest, and the ravag'd vale;
While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch,
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky. Ibid.
As yet the trembling year is unconfirm'd,
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless.
The expansive atmosphere is cramp'd with cold;
But, full of life and vivifying soul,
Lifts the bright clouds sublime, and spreads them thin, Fleecy and white, o'er all surrounding heaven. Ibid.
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