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RESURRECTION-RETIREMENT.

Brave resolution; I am proud to see
So sweet a graft upon a wormwood tree;
Whose juice is gall, but yet the fruit most rare.
Heywood's Fair Maid of the Exchange.

Entice the trusty sun

From his ecliptic line, he shall obey
Your beck, and wander from his sphere, ere I
From my resolves.

Baron's Mirza.

If your resolutions be like mine,
We will yet give our sorrows a brave end.
Justice is for us, so may fortune be:
I'm a bright proof of her inconstancy.
But if no god will lend us any aid,
Let us be gods and fortune to ourselves.

Crown's Darius.

Men make resolves, and pass into decrees
The motions of the mind! with how much ease,
In such resolves, doth passion make a flaw,
And bring to nothing what was rais'd to law.

Churchill.

There lies no desert in the land of life,
For e'en that tract that barrenest doth seem,
Labour'd of thee in faith and hope, shall teem
With heavenly harvests and rich gatherings rife.
Frances Kemble Butler.

They waken,

Such thoughts as these, an energy, A spirit that will not be shaken

Till frail mortality shall die.

RESURRECTION.
And see!

'Tis come, the glorious morn! the second birth
Of heaven and earth! awakening nature hears
The new creating word, and starts to life,
In every heighten'd form, from pain and death
For ever free.
Thomson's Seasons

Ye vainly wise! ye blind presumptuous! now,
Confounded in the dust, adore that power
And wisdom oft arraign'd: see now the cause,
Why unassuming worth in secret liv'd,
And died neglected: why the good man's share
In life was gall and bitterness of soul:
Why the lone widow and her orphans pin'd
In starving solitude; while luxury,

In palaces, lay straining her low thoughts
To form unreal wants.

Thomson's Seasons.
Now starting up among the living chang'd,
Appear'd innumerous the risen dead,
Each particle of dust was claim'd: the turf,
For ages trod beneath the careless feet
Of men, rose, organiz'd in human form.

Pollock's Course of Time.
The doors of death were open'd; and in the dark
And loathsome vault, and silent charnel-house,
Moving, were heard the moulder'd bones that sought
Their proper place. Instinctive, every soul
Flew to its clayey part: from grass-grown mould,

Willis's Poems. The nameless spirit took its ashes up,

How use doth breed a habit in a man!
This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,

I better brook than flourishing peopled towns:
Here I can sit alone, unseen of any,
And to the nightingale's complaining notes,
Tune my distresses, and record my woes.

Shaks. Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Court honours, and your shadows of true joy,
That shine like stars, but till a greater light
Drown your weak lustre; I abjure your sight;
Ev'n from my meditations, and my thoughts
I banish your enticing vanities;
And closely kept within my study walls,
As from a cave of rest, henceforth I'll see
And smile, but never taste your misery.

Goffe's Raging Turk.

Thy father's poverty has made thee happy;
For, though 't is truc, this solitary life
Suits not with youth and beauty, O my child!
Yet 't is the sweetest guardian to protect
Chaste names from court-aspersions.

Dear solitary groves, where peace does dwell!
Sweet harbours of pure love and innocence!
How willingly could I for ever stay
Beneath the shade of your embracing greens,
List'ning to the harmony of warbling birds,
Tun'd with the gentle murmur of the streams;
Upon whose bank, in various livery,

The fragrant offspring of the early year,
Their heads, like graceful swans, bent proudly
down,

See their own beauties in the crystal flood.
Rochester's Valentinian.

Safety dwells

Remote from multitude; the world's a school
Of wrong, and what proficients swarm around!
We must or imitate, or disapprove;

Must list as their accomplices, or foes;

That stains our innocence; this wounds our

peace.

From nature's birth, hence, wisdom has been smit

Beaumont and Fletcher's Laws of Candy. With sweet recess, and languisht for the shade.

Was man e'er bless'd with that excess of joy
Equal to ours, to us that feel no want
Of high court favours, life's licentiousness?
Pichards's Messalina.

How miserable a thing is a great man:
Take noisy vexing greatness they that please,
Give me obscure, and safe, and silent case.
Crown's Thestes.

And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth show
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain.

Young's Night Thoughts

What are the falling rills, the pendent shades,
The morning bowers, the evening colonnades,
But soft recesses for the weary mind
To sigh unheard into the passing wind!
So the struck deer, in some sequester'd part,
Lies down to die (the arrow in his heart :)
There hid in shades, and wasting day by day,
Inly he bleeds and pants his soul away.

His gardens next your admiration call,
On every side you look, behold the wall!
No pleasing iatricacies intervene,

Pope.

No artful wildness to perplex the scene;
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
And half the platform just reflects the other;
The suffering eye inverted nature sees,
Trees cut to statues, statucs thick as trees;
With here a fountain, never to be play'd,
And there a summer-house that knows no shade.
Pope's Moral Essays.

What, what is virtue but repose of mind,
A pure ethereal calm, that knows no storm;
Above the reach of wild ambition's wind,

Milton's Il Penseroso. Above the passions that this world deforın,

Wisdom's self

Oft seeks so sweet retired solitude;
Where, with her best nurse, contemplation,
She plumes her feathers, and lets go her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd.
Milton's Comus.

And torture man, a proud malignant worm?
But here, instead, soft gales of passion play,
And gently stir the heart, thereby to form
A quicker sense of joy; as breezes stray
Across th' enliven'd skies, and make them stil
more gay.

Thomson's Castle of Indolence

The best of men have ever lov'd repose:
They hate to mingle in the filthy fray,
Where the soul sours, and gradual rancour grows,
Imbitter'd more from peevish day to day.
Even those whom fame has lent her fairest ray,
The most renown'd of worthy wights of yore,
From a base world at last have stolen away:
So Scipio, to the soft Cumaan shore
Retiring, tasted joy he never knew before.

Thomson's Castle of Indolence.

Or by the vocal woods and waters lull'd,
And lost in lonely musing, in the dream,
Confus'd, of careless solitude, where mix,
Ten thousand wand'ring images of things,
Soothe every gust of passion into peace;
All but the swellings of the soften'd heart,
That waken, not disturb, the tranquil mind.
Thomson's Seasons.

Now from the town,

The fall of kings,

The rage of nations, and the crush of states,
Move not the man, who, from the world escap'd,
In still retreats, and flow'ry solitudes.
To nature's voice attends, from month to month,
And day to day, thro' the revolving year;
Admiring, sees her in her every shape;
Feels all her sweet emotions at his heart;
Takes what she liberal gives, nor thinks of more
Thomson's Seasons.
What joy to hear the tempest howl in vain,
And clasp a fearful mistress to my heart!
Or lull'd to slumber by the beating rain,
Secure and happy, sink at last to rest!

Oh! blest of heaven, whom not the languid songs
Of luxury, the syren! nor the bribes

Of sordid wealth, nor all the gaudy spoils
Of pageant honour, can seduce to leave
Those ever-blooming sweets, which from the store

Buried in smoke, and sleep, and noisome damps, Of nature fair imagination culls

Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields,
Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling
drops

From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze
Of sweet-brier hedges, I pursue my walk.
Thomson's Seasons.
Welcome, ye shades! ye bowery thickets, hail!
Ye lofty pines! Ye venerable oaks!
Ye ashes wild, resounding o'er the steep!
Delicious is your shelter to the soul.

To charm the enliven'd soul!

Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination.

O blest retirement, friend to life's decline,
Retreats from care, that never must be mine:
How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these,
A youth of labour with an age of ease;
Who quits a world where strong temptations try,
And, since 't is hard to combat, learns to fly!
Goldsmith's Deserted Village
Could'st thou resign the park and play, content,
Thomson's Seasons. For the fair banks of Severn or of Trent:

O, knew he but his happiness, of men
'The happiest he! who, far from public rage,
Deep in the vale, with a choice few retir'd,
Drinks the pure pleasures of the rural life.
Thomson's Seasons.

Then is the time,

For those whom wisdom and whom nature charm,
To steal themselves from the degenerate crowd,
And soar above this little scene of things;
T., tread low-thoughted vice beneath their feet;
To soothe the throbbing passions into peace;
And woo lone quiet in her silent walks.

Thomson's Seasons.

There might'st thou find some elegant retreat,
Some hireling senator's deserted seat;

And stretch thy prospects o'er the smiling land,
For less than rent the dungeons of the Strand;
There prune thy walks, support thy drooping
flow'rs,

Direct thy rivulets and twine thy bow'rs;
And, while thy beds a cheap repast afford,
Despise the dainties of a venal lord:
There ev'ry bush with nature's music rings,
There ev'ry breeze bears health upon its wings;
On all thy hours security shall smile,
And bless thy evening walk and morning toil.
Dr. Johnson's London.

The fall of waters, and the song of birds,
And hills that echo to the distant herds,
Are luxuries excelling all the glare

The world can boast, and her chief favourites
share.
Cowper's Retirement.
The statesman, lawyer, merchant, man of trade,
Pants for the refuge of some rural shade,
Where, all his long anxieties forgot
Amid the charms of a sequester'd spot,
Or recollected only to gild o'er,

And add a smile to what was sweet before,
He may possess the joys he thinks he sees, .
Lay his old age upon the lap of ease,
Improve the remnant of his wasted span,
And having liv'd a trifler, die a man.

Cowper's Retirement.

Anticipated rents and bills unpaid,
Force many a shining youth into the shade,
Not to redeem his time, but his estate,
And play the fool, but at a cheaper rate.

Cowper's Retirement.

The love of nature and the scenes she draws
Are nature's dictates. Strange! there should be
found

Who self-imprison'd in their proud saloons,
Renounce the odours of the open field
For the unscented fictions of the loom.

How various his employment, whom the world
Calls idle, and who justly in return
Esteems that busy world an idler too!
Friends, books, a garden, and perhaps his pen,
Delightful industry enjoy'd at home,
And nature in her cultivated trim
Dress'd to his taste, inviting him abroad.

Cowper's Task

Happiest of men! if the same soil invites
A chosen few, companions of his youth,
Once fellow-rakes, perhaps, now rural friends;
With whom in easy commerce to pursue
Nature's free charms, and vie for sylvan fame;
A fair ambition, void of strife or guile,
Or jealousy, or pain to be outdone.

Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health
Ye who amid the feverish world would wear
A body free of pain, of cares a mind;
Fly the rank city, shun the turbid air;
Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke
And volatile corruption, from the dead,
The dying, sick'ning, and the living world
Exhal'd, to sully heaven's transparent dome
With dim mortality.

Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health.
Half-way up

He built his house, whence by stealth he caught,
Cowper's Task. Among the hills, a glimpse of busy life,
That sooth'd, not stirr'd.

O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity to shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful and successful war
Might never reach me more! My ear is pa
My soul is sick with ev'ry day's report,
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd.
Cowper's Task.

But slighted as it is, and by the great
Abandon'd, and, which still I more regret,
Infected with the manners and the modes
It knew not once, the country wins me still.
Cowper's Task.

Ev'n in the stifling bosom of the town,
A garden, in which nothing thrives, has charms
That soothe the rich possessor; much consol'd
That here and there some sprigs of mournful mint,
Of night-shade or Valerian, grace the wall
He cultivates.

Cowper's Task.

Rogers's Italy.

Oh, Psyche, happy in thine ignorance!
Couldst thou but shun this heart-tormenting bane;
Be but content, nor daringly advance

To meet the bitter hour of threatened pain;
Pure spotless dove! seek thy safe nest again
Let true affection shun the public eye,
And quit the busy circle of the vain,

For there the treacherous snares concealed lie:
Oh timely warned escape! to safe retirement fly!.
Mrs. Tighe's Psyche.
How much they err, who, to their interest blind,
Slight the calm peace which from retirement flows!
And while they think their fleeting joys to bind,
Banish the tranquil bliss which heaven for man
Mrs. Tighe's Psyche

designed!

So thy fair hand, enamour'd fancy! gleans
The treasured pictures of a thousand years;
Thy pencil traces on the lover's thoughts
Some cottage-home, from towns and toil remow
Where love and lore may calm alternate hours,
With peace embosom'd in Idalian bowers.
Remote from busy life's bewilder'd way,
O'er all his heart shall taste and beauty sway.
Campbell's Pleasures of Hope