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

Somerville

  • Adversity, sage useful guest,
  • Severe instructor, but the best,
  • It is from thee alone we know
  • Justly to value things below.
  • At length the sun began to peep,
  • And glid the surface of the deep.
  • Each animal,
  • By natural instinct taught, spares his own kind,
  • But man, the tyrant man! revels at large.
  • Freebooter unrestrain’d, destroys at will
  • The whole creation; men and beasts his prey;
  • These for his pleasure, for his glory those.
  • Frail empire of a day!
  • That with the setting sun extinct is lost.
  • Let cavillers deny
  • That brutes have reason; sure ’tis something more,
  • ’Tis heaven directs, and stratagems inspires
  • Beyond the short extent of human thought.
  • O happy if ye knew your happy state,
  • Ye rangers of the fields! whom nature’s boon
  • Cheers with her smiles, and ev’ry element
  • Conspires to bless.
  • O mercy, heav’ly born! Sweet attribute.
  • Thou great, thou best prerogative of power!
  • Justice may guard the throne, but join’d with thee,
  • On rocks of adamant, it stands secure,
  • And braves the storm beneath.
  • See there he comes, th’ exalted idol comes!
  • The circle’s form’d, and all his fawning slaves
  • Devoutly bow to earth; from every mouth
  • The nauseous flattery flows, which he returns
  • With promises which die as soon as born.
  • Vile intercourse, where virtue has no place!
  • Frown but the monarch, all his glories fade;
  • He mingles with the throng, outcast, undone,
  • The pageant of a day; without one friend
  • To soothe his tortur’d mind; all, all are fled,
  • For though they bask’d in his meridian ray,
  • The insects vanish as his beams decline.