(I speak it with a single heart, my lords)
A man that more detests, more stirs against,
Both in his private conscience, and his place,
Defacers of a public peace, than I do ;
Pray heaven the king may never find a heart
With less allegiance in it.
Shaks. Henry VIII.
My vows and prayers
Yet are the king's; and till my soul forsake me,
Shall cry for blessings on him: may he live
Longer than I have time to tell his years!
Ever belov'd and loving, may his rule bc!
And when old time shall lead him to his end,
Goodness and he fill up one monument.
Shaks. Henry VIII. They for their truth, might better wear their
Than some, that have accus'd them, wear their
Shaks. Richard III.
Heaven witness
I have been to you a true and humble wife,
At all times to your will conformable:
Ever in fear to kindle your dislike,
Yea subject to your countenance; glad, or sorry,
As I saw it inclin'd.
Shaks. Henry VIII.
Here I kneel:-
If e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his love,
Either in discourse, or thought, or actual deed;
Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense
Delighted them in any other form;
Or that I do not vet, and ever did,
And ever will-though he do shake me off
To beggarly divorcement - love him dearly,
Comfort forswear me!
1 durst, my lord, to wager she is honest,
Lay down my soul at stake: if you think other,
Remove your thought; it doth abuse your bosom.
If any wretch hath put this in your head,
Let heaven requite it with the serpent's curse:
For, if she be not honest, chaste, and true,
There's ao mar. happy: the purest of their wives
Is foul as slander.
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If this austere unsociable life
Change not your offer made in heat of blood;
If frosts, and fasts, hard lodging, and thin weeds,
Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,
But that it bear this trial, and last love;
Then, at the expiration of the year,
Come challenge me.
Shaks. Love's Labour.
Here is my hand for my true constancy;
And when that hour o'erslips me in the day,
Wherein I sigh not, Julia, for thy sake,
The next ensuing hour some foul mischance
Torment me, for my love's forgetfulness!
Shaks. Two Gentlemen of Verona.
His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles;
His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate;
His tears pure messengers sent from his heart:
His heart as far from fraud, as heaven and earth.
Shaks. Two Gentlemen of Verona.
O heaven! were man
But constant, he were perfect: that one error
Fills him with faults.
Shaks. Two Gentlemen of Verona.
God join'd my heart and Romeo's, thou our hands;
And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seal'd,
Shall be the label to another deed,
Or my true heart with treacherous revolt
Turn to another, this shall slay them both.
Shaks. Romeo and Juliet.
Chain me with roaring bears;
Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house,
O'er-cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones,
With reeky shanks, and yellow chapless skulls;
Or bid me go into a new-made grave,
And hide me with a dead man in his shroud; Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble;
And I will do it without fear or doubt,
To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love.
False to his bed! What is it to be false?
To lie in watch there, and to think on him?
To weep 'twixt clock and clock? if sleep charge nature,
To break it with a fearful dream of him,
And cry myself awake? that's false to his bed,
Is it?
Among the faithless, faithful only he;
Among innumerable false, unmov'd,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified;
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal;
Nor number, nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind
Though single.
Well hast thou fought
The better fight, who single hast maintain'd
Against revolted multitudes the cause
Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms;
And for the testimony of truth hast borne
Universal reproach, far worse to bear
Than violence.
But grief did lay his icy finger on it,
And chill'd it to a cold and joyless statue
Milton's Paradise Lost. Methought she caroll'd blithely in her youth,
Confirm'd then I resolve, Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe: So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life. Milton's Paradise Lost.
Certain my resolution is to die;
How can I live without thee, how forego
Thy sweet converse and love so dearly join’d,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel
The link of nature draw me: flesh of my flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woc.
Milton's Paradise Lost.
Trust repos'd in noble natures,
As the couch'd nestling trills his vesper lay;
But song and smile, beauty and melody,
And youth and happiness are gone from her,
Perchance- -even as she is he would not scoin
her,
If he could know her-for, for him she's chang'd,
She is much alter'd-but her heart-her heart!
Maturin's Bertram.
If thou could'st speak,
Dumb witness of the secret soul of Imogine,
Thou might'st acquit the faith of womankind-
Since thou wast on my midnight pillow laid,
Friend hath forsaken friend, the brotherly tie
Been lightly loos'd-The parted coldly met-
Yea, mothers have with desperate hands wrought
harm
To little lives from their own bosoms lent.
But woman still hath lov'd-if that indeed
Woman e'er lov'd like me.
Close twisted with the fibres of the heart!
And mark me well; I am no desperate wretch,
Who borrows an excuse from shameful passion
Which broken, break them, and drain off the soul To make its shame more vile
Of human joy, and make it pain to live.
Is there, kind heaven! no constancy in man?
No steadfast truth, no generous fix'd affection,
That can bear up against a selfish world?
No, there is none.
Thomson's Tancred and Sigismunda.
M
I am a wretched, but a spotless wife.
Maturin's Berrars. Full many a miserable year hath past— She knows him as one dead, or worse than dead, And many a change her varied life hath known, But her heart none.
His sovereign's frown came next-
Then bow'd the banners on his crested walls,
Torn by the enemies' hand from their proud
height;
Where twice two hundred years they mock'd the
The stranger's step profan'd his desolate halls,
An exil'd, outcast, houseless, nameless object,
He fied for life, and scarce by flight did save it.
No hoary beadsman bid his parting step
God speed-no faithful vassal follow'd him;
For fear had wither'd every heart but hers,
Who amid shame and ruin lov'd him better.
Maturin's Bertram.
Ah! then as nature's tenderest impulse wrought,
With fond solicitude of love she sought
To soothe his limbs upon their grassy bed,
And make the pillow easy to his head;
She wiped his reeking temples with her hair,
She shook the leaves to stir the sleeping air,
Moisten'd his lips with kisses; with her breath,
Vainly essay'd to quell the fire of death,
That ran and revell'd through his swollen veins
With quicker pulses, and severer pains.
Oh! the heart that has truly lov'd never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sun-flower turns to her god when he sets,
The same look which she turn'd when he rose.
Come rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer!
Tho' the herd hath fled from thee, thy home is still
here;
Here still is the smile that no cloud can o'ercast,
And the heart and the hand all thy own to the last?
Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slander'd, thou never could'st shake,
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 't was not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie.
Then let the fool, still prone to range
And sneer on all who cannot change,
Partake his jest with boasting boys,
I envy not his varied joys,
Montgomery's World before the Flood. But deem such feeble, heartless man,
Thought ye your iron hands of pride
Could break the knot that love had tied?
No: let the eagle change his plume,
The leaf its hue, the flow'r its bloom;
But tics around this heart were spun,
That could not, would not, be undone!
Less than yon solitary swan;
Far, far beneath the shallow maid
He left believing, and betray'd.
That's false! a truer, nobler, trustier heart, More loving, or more loyal, never beat Within a human breast. I would not change My exiled, persecuted, mangled husband, Oppress'd but not disgrac'd, crush'd, overwhelm'd, Thro' joy, and thro' torments,thro' glory and shame? Alive, or dead, for prince or paladin
Oh! what was love made for, if 't is not the same
Oh! if there be an elysium on earth,
It is this-
When two that are link'd in one heavenly tie,
Love on through all ills, and love on till they die.
Moore.
Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,
In story or in fable, with a world
To back his suit. Dishonour'd!-he dishonour'd!
I tell thee, doge, 't is Venice is dishonour'd.
Byron's Tuo Foscari.
Where is honour,
Innate and precept-strengthen'd, 't is the rock
Of faith connubial: where it is not where
Light thoughts are lurking, or the vanities
Were to change by to-morrow, and melt in my Of worldly pleasure rankle in the heart,
Like fairy-gifts, fading away!
Or sensual throbs convulse it, well I know
'T were hopeless for humanity to dream
Thou would'st still be ador'd, as this moment thou Of honesty in such infected blood,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
Although 't were wed to him it covets most.
Byron's Doge of Venice.
And, around the dear ruin, each wish of my heart Vice cannot fix, and virtue cannot change,
Would entwine itself verdantly still!
It is not, while beauty and youth are thine own,
And thy, cheeks unprofan'd by a tear,
That the fervour and faith of a soul can be known,
lo which time will but make thee more dear!
The once fall'n woman must for ever fall;
For vice must have variety, while virtue
Stands like the sun, and all which rolls around
Drinks life, and light, and glory from her aspect
Byron's Doge of Venice
FIGHTING-FIRMNESS - FISHING - FLAG.
To soothe thy sickness, watch thy health,
Partake, but never waste, thy wealth,
Or stand with smiles unmurmuring by,
And lighten half thy poverty;
Do all but close thy dying eye,
For that I could not live to try.
Byron's Bride of Abydos.
Yet well my toils shall that fond breast repay,
Though fortune frown, or falser friends betray.
How dear the dream in darkest hours of ill,
Should all be changed, to find thee faithful still.
Be but thy soul, like Selim's, firmly shown;
To thee be Selim's tender as thy own;
To soothe each sorrow, share in each delight,
Blend every thought, do all—but disunite.
Byron's Bride of Abydos.
Adah. — Alas! thou sinnest now, my Cain; thy
My heart too firmly trusted, fondly gave Itself to all its tenderness a slave;
"Tis the fate of princes, that no knowledge
Comes pure to them, but, passing through the eyes
And ears of other men, it takes a tincture
From every channel; and still bears a relish
Of flattery or private ends.
Self-love never yet could look on truth, But with blear'd beams; slick flattery and she Are twin-born sisters, and so mix their eyes, And if you sever one, the other dies.
O thou world, great nurse of flattery,
O, that men's ears should be
To counsel deaf, but not to flattery!
Shakspeare.
Who dares
In purity of manhood stand upright,
And say, this man's a flatterer? if one be,
So are they all; for every grize of fortune
Is smooth'd by that below: the learned pate
Ducks to the golden fool: all is oblique;
There's nothing level in our cursed natures,
But direct villany.
Shaks. Timon of Athens.
Why these looks of care?
Thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft;
Hug their diseas'd perfumes, and have forgot
That ever Timon was. Shame not these woods,
By putting on the cunning of a carper.
Be thou a flatterer now, and seek to thrive
By that which has undone thee: hinge thy knee,
And let his very breath, whom thou'lt observe,
Blow off thy cap; praise his most vicious strain,
And call it excellent.
Shaks. Timon of Athens.
He loves to hear,
That unicorns may be betray'd with trees,
And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,
Lions with toils, and men with flatterers:
But, when I tell him, he hates flatterers,
He says, he does; being then most flatter'd.
Shaks. Julius Cæsar.
To think that Cæsar bears such rebel blood,
That will be thaw'd from the true quality
With that which melteth fools; I mean, sweet
words,
Low-crook'd curt'sies, and base spaniel fawning.
Shaks. Julius Cæsar.
Nay, do not think I flatter:
For what advancement may I hope from thee,
That no revenue hast, but thy good spirits,
To feed, and clothe thee? why should the poor be
flatter'd?
Why dost thou tip men's tongues with golden No, let the candy'd tongue lick absurd pomp;
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may follow fawning.
And poise their deeds with weight of heavy lead,
That fair performance cannot follow promise?
O that a man might hold the heart's close book
And choke the lavish tongue, when it doth utter
The breath of falsehood, not character'd there.
Anon. Edward III.
Why what a deal of candied courtesy,
This fawning greyhound then did proffer me!
Look--when his infant fortune came to age,
And-gentle Harry Percy, and, kind cousin,
The devil take such cozeners!-God forgive me!
Shaks. Henry IV. Part I.
And think with wagging of your tongue to win
Shaks. Henry VIII
You are far too prodigal in praise,
And crown me with the garlands of your merit;
As we meet barks on rivers-the strong gale
Being best friend to us-our swift motion
Makes us believe that t'other nimbler rows;
Swift virtue thinks small goodness fastest goes
Davenport's City Night-Cap.
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