Traffic my useful merchandise; gold and jewels,
Lordly possessions are for my commoditics
Mortgag'd and sold; I sit chief moderator
Those few pale Autumn flowers!
How beautiful they are!
Than all that went before,
Between the cheek-parch'd summer, and th' ex- Than all the Summer store,
Of winter's tedious frost; nay, in myself
I do contain another teeming spring:
Surety of health, prosperity of life
That loveliness ever in motion, which plays,
Like the light upon Autumn's soft, shadowy days,
Now here and now there, giving warmth as it flies,
Ford and Decker's Sun's Darling. From the lips to the cheeks, from the cheek to the
The year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter.
Best portion of the various year, in which
Nature rejoiceth, smiling on her works,
Lovely, to full perfection wrought.
Wild is the music of autumnal winds
Amongst the faded woods.
And greedy avarice by him did ride
Upon a camell loaden all with gold;
Philips's Cider. Two iron coffers hang on either side,
Fled is the blasted verdure of the fields;
And, shrunk into their beds, the flowery race
Their sunny robes resign. Even what remain'd
Of stronger fruits falls from the naked tree;
And woods, fields, gardens, orchards, all around
The desolated prospect thrills the soul.
Thomson's Seasons.
Again the year's decline, midst storms and floods
With precious metall full as they might hold
And in his lap an heap of coin he told;
For of his wicked pelf his god he made,
And unto hell himself for money sold;
Accursed usury was all his trade,
And right and wrong ylike in equall balance
waide,
His life was nigh unto death's dore yplaste;
And thred-bare cote and cobbled shoes he warc,
He scarce good morsell all his life did taste,
But both from backe and belly still did spare,
To fill his bags, and richesse to compare :
Yet child ne kinsman living had he none,
To leave them to; but thorough daily care
To get, and nightly feare to lose his owne.
He led a wretched life unto himselfe unknowne,
Most wretched wight whom nothing might suffice,
Whose greedy lust did lack in greatest store,
Whose need had end, but no end covetise.
Whose wealth was want, whose plenty made him
The thundering chase, the yellow fading woods, Who had enough, yet wished evermore.
Invite my song; that fain would boldly tell
of upland coverts, and the echoing dell,
By turns resounding loud at eve and morn
The swineherd's hallow or the shepherd's horn.
Bloomfield's Farmer Boy.
And in his lap a masse of coyne he told
And turned upside downe, to feede his eye
And covetous desire with his huge treasury.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
See!
The difference 'twixt the covetous and the prodigal.
The covetous man never has money,
And the prodigal will have none shortly!
Johnson's Staple of News.
When all sins are old in us,
And go upon crutches, covetousness
Does but then lie in her cradle.
Gross nurtur'd slaves, who force their wretched souls
To crouch to profit; nay, for trash and wealth, Doat on some crooked or misshapen form, Hugging wise nature's lame deformity, Begetting creatures ugly as themselves.
John Ford's Love Sacrifice.
When I was blind, my son, I did miscall
My sordid vice of avarice, true thrift.
But now forget that lesson, I prithee do,
That cos'ning vice, although it seems to keep
Our wealth, debars us from possessing it,
And makes us more than poor.
May his soul be plung'd
In ever burning floods of liquid gold,
And be his avarice the fiend that damns him.
To cram the rich was prodigal expense,
And who would take the poor from Providence?
Like some lone chartreux stands the good old hall,
Silence without and fasts within the wall;
No rafter'd roofs with dance and tabor sound,
No noon-tide bell invites the country round:
Tenants with sighs the smokeless towers survey,
And turn th' unwilling steeds another way;
Benighted wanderers, the forest o'er,
Curs'd the sav'd candle, and unopening door;
While the gaunt mastiff growling at the gate,
Affrights the beggar whom he longs to eat.
Pope's Moral Essays
'Tis strange the miser should his cares employ
To gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy ;
Is it less strange the prodigal should waste
His wealth to purchase what he ne'er can taste?
Pope's Moral Essays.
Riches, like insects, when conceal'd they lie,
Wait but for wings, and in their season fly;
Who sees pale Mammon pine amidst his store
Sees but a backward steward for the poor;
This year a reservoir, to keep and spare;
The next a fountain, spouting through his heir,
In lavish streams to quench a country's thirst,
And men and dogs shall drink him till they burst.
Pope's Moral Essays.
Wealth in the gross is death, but life diffus'd;
As poison heals, in just proportions us'd;
In heaps, like ambergris, a sink it lies,
And well dispers'd, is incense to the skies.
Pope's Moral Essays
"I give and I devise," (Old Euclio said,
And sigh'd,) "my lands and tenements to Ned."
Your money, sir? – -"My money, sir, what, all?
Why, if I must" (then wept), "I give it Paul."
The manor, sir?-"The manor! hold," he cried,
"Not that I cannot part with that," and died.
Pope's Moral Essays.
The lust of gold succeeds the lust of conquest:
The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless!
The last corruption of degenerate man.
Dr. Johnson's Irene.
Some, o'cr-enamour'd of their bags, run mad,
Groan under gold, yet weep for want of bread.
Young's Night Thoughts.
O cursed love of gold; when for thy sake
The fool throws up his interest in both worlds,
First starv'd in this, then damn'd in that to come.
Blair's Grave.
Who, lord of millions, trembles for his store,
And fears to give a farthing to the poor;
Proclaims that penury will be his fate,
And, scowling, looks on charity with hate.
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.
The love of gold, that meanest rage,
And latest folly of man's sinking age,
Which, rarely venturing in the van of life,
While nobler passions wage their heated strife,
Comes skulking last with selfishness and fear,
And dies collecting lumber in the rear!
Moore. The credulous hope of mutual minds is o'er, The copious use of claret is forbid too, So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, I think I must take up with avarice.
Byron's Don Juan. Oh gold!—why call we misers miserable? Theirs is the pleasure that can never pall; Theirs is the best bower-anchor, the chain cable, Which holds fast other pleasures great and small; Ye who but see the saving man at table, And scorn his temperate board, as none at all, And wonder how the wealthy can be sparing, Know not what visions spring from each cheeseparing.
Why call the miser miserable? As
I said before, the frugal life is his,
Which in a saint or cynic ever was
The theme of praise: a hermit would not miss
Canonization for the self-same cause,
And wherefore blame gaunt wealth's austerities?
Because, you'll say, naught calls for such a trial;-
Then there's more merit in his self-denial.
Byron's Don Juan.
But whether all, or each, or none of these,
May be the hoarder's principle of action,
The fool will call such mania a disease:-
What is his own? Go look at each transaction,
Wars, revels, loves-do these bring men more ease
Than the mere plodding through each vulgar
fraction;
Or do they benefit mankind? Lean miser!
Let spendthrifts' heirs inquire of yours, who's
Byron's Don Juan. Why Mammon sits before a million hearths Where God is bolted out from every house. Bailley's Festus.
The churl who holds it heresy to think,
Who loves no music but the dollar's clink,
Who laughs to scorn the wisdom of the schools,
And deems the first of poets first of fools,
Go say, I sent thee forth to purchase honour;
And not the king exiled thee. Or suppose
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.
Look what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou goest, not whence thou
Shaks. Richard Il
Flies may do this, when I from this must fly;
They are free men, but I am banished.
Shaks. Romeo and Julut.
I've stoopt my neck under your injuries,
And sigh'd my English breath in foreign clouas,
Eating the bitter bread of banishment;
While you have fed upon my signories;
Dispark'd my parks, and fell'd my forest woods;
From mine own windows torn my household-coat,
Raz'd out my impress; leaving me no sign,
Save men's opinions, and my living blood,
To show the world I am a gentleman.
O friar, the damned use that word in hell;
Howlings attend it: how hast thou the heart,
Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,
A sin absolver, and my friend profest,
To mangle me with that word-banishment?
Shaks. Romeo and Juliet.
The rest, that scape his sword and death eschew
Fly like a flocke of doves before a falcon's view.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
All sodainly enflam'd with furious fit,
Like a fell lionesse, at him she flew,
Shaks. Richard II. And on his head-piece him so fiercely smit,
That to the ground him quite she overthrew,
Dismay'd so with the stroke that he no colours
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
The eager armies meet to try their cause,
Our English lords in four battalias
Bring on their forces, but so furious grows
In little time the fight, so near the blows,
That soon no order we perceive at all,
For, like one body, closely move they all.
May's Edward III.
Banish your dotage: banish usury,
That makes the senate ugly.
I'll give thrice so much land,
To any well deserving friend;
But in the way of bargain, mark me,
I'll cavil on the ninth part of a hair.
Shaks. Henry IV.
The age
of bargaining, said Burke,
Has come to-day the turban'd Turk
Is England's friend and fast ally.
Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
The Douglas in red herrings;
And noble name and cultur'd land,
Palace, and park, and vassal band,
Are powerless to the notes of hand
Of Rothschild or the Barings.
If we are mark'd to die, we are enough
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men the greater share of honour.
Shaks. Henry V.
A thousand hearts are great within my bosom;
Halleck's Alnwich Castle. Advance our standards, set upon our foes;
Therewith they gan, both furious and fell,
To thunder blowes, and fiercely to assaile
Each other, bent his enemy to quell,
Our ancient word of courage, fair saint George,
Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons!
Upon them! Victory sits on our helms.
Shaks. Richard III.
The cannons have their bowels full of wrath;
And ready mounted are they to spit forth
That with their force they perst both plate and Their iron indignation 'gainst your walls.
And made wide furrows in their fleshes fraile,
That it would pity any living eie.
Large floods of blood adowne their sides did raile,
But floods of blood could not them satisfie:
Both hongred after death; both chose to win or die.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.
Then to the rest his wrathful hand he bends,
Of whom he makes such havocke and such hew,
That swarns of damned soules to hell he sends;
My sons -God knows what hath bechanced them:
But this I know-they have demean'd themselves
Like men born to renown, by life, or death.
Three times did Richard make a lane to me;
And thrice cried - Courage, father, fight it out!
And full as oft came Edward on my side,
With purple faulchion, painted to the hilt,
In blood of those that had encounter'd him.
Shaks. Henry VI.
Methought, he bore him in the thickest troop,
As doth a lion in a herd of neat:
Or as a bear, encompass'd round with dogs;
Who having pinch'd a few, and made them cry,
The rest stand all aloof, and bark at him.
Shaks. Henry VI. And now their mightiest quell'd, the battle swerv'd, With many an inroad gor'd; deformed rout Enter'd and foul disorder; all the ground With shiver'd armour strown, and on a heap Chariot and charioteer lay overturn'd, And fiery foaming steeds.
Milton's Paradise Lost.
"Twixt host and host but narrow space was left,
A dreadful interval, and front to front
Presented stood in terrible array
Of hideous length; before the cloudy van
On the rough edge of battle cre it join'd,
Satan, with vast and haughty strides advanc'd,
Came tow'ring, arm'd in adamant and gold.
Milton's Paradise Lost.
The shout
Of battle now began, and rushing sound
Of onset ended soon each milder thought.
Milton's Paradise Lost.
Now night her course began, and over heaven
Inducing darkness, grateful truce, impos'd
Her silence on the odious din of war:
Under her cloudy covert hath retir'd,
Victor and vanquish'd.
Hark-the death-denouncing trumpet sounds
The fatal charge, and shouts proclaim the onset-
Destruction rushes dreadful to the field,
And bathes itself in blood: havoc let loose
Now undistinguish'd, rages all around;
While ruin, seated on her dreary throne,
Sees the plain strewed with subjects truly hers,
Breathless and cold.
Havard's Scanderbeg.
Even like an arrow on the wind he rode
His winged courser, and with noble daring
Swept with his chivalrous escort past our front,
Even at the stormy edge of chafing battle.
Milton's Paradise Lost. Behold in awful march and dread array,
Levell❜d his deadly aim; their fatal hands
No second stroke intended.
Milton's Paradise Lost.
When one, that bare a link,
O' th' sudden clapp'd his flaming cudgel,
Like linstock, to the horse's touch-hole;
And straight another with his flambeau,
Gave Ralpho o'er the eyes a damn'd blow.
Butler's Hudibras.
"Tis not the least disparagement
To be defeated by th' event,
Nor to be beaten by main force,
That does not make a man the worse;
But to turn tail, and run away,
And without blows give up the day,
Or to surrender ere th' assault,
That's no man's fortune, but his fault.
Full oft the rivals met, and neither spar'd
His utmost force, and each forgot to ward.
The head of this was to the saddle bent,
The other backward to the crupper sent.
Dryden's Palamon and Arcite.
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