C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

May

A true philosopher

Makes death his common practice, while he lives,

And every day by contemplation strives

To separate the soul, far as he can,

From off the body.

For true charity

Though ne’er so secret finds its just reward.

From our tables here, no painful surfeits,

No fed diseases grow, to strangle nature,

And suffocate the active brain; no fevers,

No apoplexies, palsies or catarrhs

Are here; where nature, not entic’d at all

With such a dang’rous bait as pleasant cates,

Takes in no more than she can govern well.

Health and liberty

Attend on these bare meals; if all were blest

With such a temperance, what man would fawn,

Or to his belly sell his liberty?

There would be then no slaves, no sycophants

At great men’s tables.

Known mischiefs have their cure; but doubts have none;

And better is despair than fruitless hope

Mix’d with a killing fear.

None can describe the sweets of country life,

But those blest men that do enjoy and taste them.

Plain husbandmen, tho’ far below our pitch,

Of fortune plac’d, enjoy a wealth above us;

To whom the earth with true and bounteous justice,

Free from war’s cares, returns an easy food,

They breathe the fresh and uncorrupted air,

And by clear brooks enjoy untroubled sleeps.

Their state is fearless and secure, enrich’d

With several blessings, such as greatest kings

Might in true justice envy, and themselves

Would count too happy, if they truly knew them.

Oh sad vicissitude

Of earthly things! to what untimely end

Are all the fading glories that attend

Upon the state of greatest monarchs, brought!

What safety can by policy be wrought,

Or rest be found on fortune’s restless wheel!

Seldom is faction’s ire in haughty minds

Extinguish’d but by death: it oft like fire

Suppress’d, breaks forth again, and blazes higher.

There, in her den, lay pompous luxury,

Stretch’d out at length; no vice could boast such high

And genial victories as she had won;

Of which proud trophies there at large were shown,

Besides small states and kingdoms ruined

Those mighty monarchies that had o’erspread

The spacious earth, and stretch’d their conquering arms

From pole to pole, by her ensnaring charms

Were quite consum’d; there lay imperial Rome,

That vanquish’d all the world, by her o’ercome;

Fetter’d was th’ old Assyrian lion there;

The Grecian leopard, and the Persian bear;

With others numberless, lamenting by,

Examples of the power of luxury.

With riotous banquets, sicknesses came in,

When death ’gan muster all his dismal band

Of pale diseases.

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