But faithfulness can feed on suffering,
And knows no disappointment.

Spanish Gypsy, Bk. III.

GEORGE ELIOT.

To God, thy countrie, and thy friend be true. Rules and Lessons.

H. VAUGHAN.

Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere,
In action faithful, and in honor clear;
Who broke no promise, served no private end,
Who gained no title, and who lost no friend.
Epistle to Mr. Addison.

FISH.

A. POPE.

O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights,
What is 't ye do? what life lead? eh, dull goggles ?
How do ye vary your vile days and nights?
How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles
In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes and bites,
And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles ?
Sonnets: The Fish, the Man, and the Spirit.

L. HUNT.

Our plenteous streams a various race supply,
The bright-eyed perch with fins of Tyrian dye,
The silver eel, in shining volumes rolled,
The yellow carp, in scales bedropped with gold,
Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains,
And pikes, the tyrants of the wat'ry plains.
Windsor Forest.

FLATTERY.

No adulation; 't is the death of virtue;
Who flatters, is of all mankind the lowest
Save he who courts the flattery.

Daniel.

O, that men's ears should be
To counsel deaf, but not to flattery!

Timon of Athens, Act i. Sc. 2.

A. POPE.

H. MORE.

SHAKESPEARE.

They do abuse the king that flatter him :
For flattery is the bellows blows up sin.

Pericles, Act i. Sc. 2.

SHAKESPEARE.

What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,

But poisoned flattery?

Henry V., Act iv. Sc. 1.

SHAKESPEARE.

But flattery never seems absurd;
The flattered always take your word:
Impossibilities seem just;

They take the strongest praise on trust.
Hyperboles, though ne'er so great,

Will still come short of self-conceit.

The Painter who pleased Nobody and Everybody.

'T is an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery 's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.

Cadenus and Vanessa.

He loves to hear

J. GAY.

J. SWIFT.

That unicorns may be betrayed 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 flattered.
Julius Caesar, Act ii. Sc. 1.

SHAKESPEARE.

Ne'er

Was flattery lost on Poet's ear :
A simple race! they waste their toil
For the vain tribute of a smile.

Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto IV.

Why should the poor be flattered?

SIR W. SCOTT.

No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may follow fawning.

Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 2.

SHAKESPEARE.

His nature is too noble for the world:

He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for 's power to thunder.

Coriolanus, Act iii. Sc. 1.

FLOWERS.

SHAKESPEARE.

No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd,

No arborett with painted blossoms drest

And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd

To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al arownd. Faërie Queene, Bk. II. Canto VI.

E. SPENSER.

"Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace:'
And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast,
Because sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.
King Richard III., Act ii. Sc. 4.

SHAKESPEARE.

Ye field flowers! the gardens eclipse you't is true:
Yet wildings of nature, I dote upon you,

For ye waft me to summers of old

When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight,
And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight,
Like treasures of silver and gold.
Field Flowers,

T. CAMPBELL.

Loveliest of lovely things are they
On earth that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
Scene on the Banks of the Hudson.

W. C. BRYANT.

Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a brere;
Sweet is the juniper, but sharp his bough;
Sweet is the eglantine, but sticketh nere;
Sweet is the firbloome, but its braunches rough;
Sweet is the cypress, but its rynd is tough;
Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill;

Sweet is the broome-flowre, but yet sowre enough;
And sweet is moly, but his root is ill.
Amoretti, Sonnet XXVI.

E. SPENSER.

And 't is my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

Lines written in Early Spring.

SPRING.

W. WORDSWORTH.

Daffy-down-dilly came up in the cold,

Through the brown mould

Although the March breezes blew keen on her face, Although the white snow lay in many a place. Daffy-Down-Dilly.

Darlings of the forest!

Blossoming alone

When Earth's grief is sorest

For her jewels gone

A. B. WARNER.

Ere the last snowdrift melts, your tender buds have blown.

Trailing Arbutus.

Ring-ting! I wish I were a primrose,

R. T. COOKE.

A bright yellow primrose blowing in the spring!
The stooping boughs above me,
The wandering bee to love me,
The fern and moss to creep across,
And the elm-tree for our king!
Wishing: A Child's Song.

W. ALLINGHAM.

Mild offspring of a dark and sullen sire!
Whose modest form, so delicately fine,
Was nursed in whirling storms,

And cradled in the winds.

Thee when young spring first questioned winter's sway, And dared the sturdy blusterer to the fight,

Thee on his bank he threw.

To mark his victory.

To an Early Primrose.

H. K. WHITE.

O Proserpina !

For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou lett'st fall
From Dis's wagon! daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,

Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,

That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength.

The Winter's Tale, Act iv. Sc. 3.

SHAKESPEARE.

The snowdrop and primrose our woodlands adorn, And violets bathe in the wet o' the morn. My Nannie's Awa'.

Peter Bell.

A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him.
And it was nothing more.

R. BURNS.

W. WORDSWORTH.

The loveliest flowers the closest cling to earth, And they first feel the sun: so violets blue; So the soft star-like primrose--drenched in dewThe happiest of Spring's happy, fragrant birth. Spring Showers.

Primrose-eyes each morning ope In their cool, deep beds of grass; Violets make the air that pass Tell-tales of their fragrant slope. Home and Travel: Ariel in the Cloven Pine.

J. KEBLE.

B. TAYLOR.

A spring upon whose brink the anemones And hooded violets and shrinking ferns And tremulous woodland things crowd unafraid, Sure of the refreshing that they always find. Unvisited.

M. J. PRESTON.

FATE.

Success, the mark no mortal wit,
Or surest hand, can always hit:
For whatsoe'er we perpetrate,

We do but row, we're steered by Fate,
Which in success oft disinherits,

For spurious causes, noblest merits.
Hudibras, Pt. I. Canto I.

S. BUTLER.

Fate holds the strings, and men like children move But as they 're led: success is from above. Heroic Love, Act v. Sc. 1.

LORD LANSDOWNE.

Fate steals along with silent tread,
Found oftenest in what least we dread;
Frowns in the storm with angry brow,
But in the sunshine strikes the blow.
A Fable: Moral.

W. COWPER.

With equal pace, impartial Fate
Knocks at the palace, as the cottage gate.

Bk. I. Ode IV.

HORACE. Trans. of PH. FRANCIS.

Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 2.

SHAKESPEARE.

What fates impose, that men must needs abide;
It boots not to resist both wind and tide.
King Henry VI., Pt. IV. Act iv. Sc. 3.

SHAKESPEARE.

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate. Essay on Man, Epistle I.

A. POPE.

Let those deplore their doom,
Whose hope still grovels in this dark sojourn :
But lofty souls, who look beyond the tomb,
Can smile at Fate, and wonder how they mourn.
The Minstrel, Bk. I.

No living man can send me to the shades
Before my time; no man of woman born,
Coward or brave, can shun his destiny.
The Iliad, Bk. VI.

J. BEATTIE,

HOMER. Trans. of BRYANT.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,

Which we ascribe to Heaven: the fated sky Gives us free scope; only, doth backward pull Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull. All's Well that Ends Well, Act i. Sc. 1.

SHAKESPEARE.