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

May

  • A true philosopher
  • Makes death his common practice, while he lives,
  • And every day by contemplation strives
  • To separate the soul, far as he can,
  • From off the body.
  • For true charity
  • Though ne’er so secret finds its just reward.
  • From our tables here, no painful surfeits,
  • No fed diseases grow, to strangle nature,
  • And suffocate the active brain; no fevers,
  • No apoplexies, palsies or catarrhs
  • Are here; where nature, not entic’d at all
  • With such a dang’rous bait as pleasant cates,
  • Takes in no more than she can govern well.
  • Health and liberty
  • Attend on these bare meals; if all were blest
  • With such a temperance, what man would fawn,
  • Or to his belly sell his liberty?
  • There would be then no slaves, no sycophants
  • At great men’s tables.
  • Known mischiefs have their cure; but doubts have none;
  • And better is despair than fruitless hope
  • Mix’d with a killing fear.
  • None can describe the sweets of country life,
  • But those blest men that do enjoy and taste them.
  • Plain husbandmen, tho’ far below our pitch,
  • Of fortune plac’d, enjoy a wealth above us;
  • To whom the earth with true and bounteous justice,
  • Free from war’s cares, returns an easy food,
  • They breathe the fresh and uncorrupted air,
  • And by clear brooks enjoy untroubled sleeps.
  • Their state is fearless and secure, enrich’d
  • With several blessings, such as greatest kings
  • Might in true justice envy, and themselves
  • Would count too happy, if they truly knew them.
  • Oh sad vicissitude
  • Of earthly things! to what untimely end
  • Are all the fading glories that attend
  • Upon the state of greatest monarchs, brought!
  • What safety can by policy be wrought,
  • Or rest be found on fortune’s restless wheel!
  • Seldom is faction’s ire in haughty minds
  • Extinguish’d but by death: it oft like fire
  • Suppress’d, breaks forth again, and blazes higher.
  • There, in her den, lay pompous luxury,
  • Stretch’d out at length; no vice could boast such high
  • And genial victories as she had won;
  • Of which proud trophies there at large were shown,
  • Besides small states and kingdoms ruined
  • Those mighty monarchies that had o’erspread
  • The spacious earth, and stretch’d their conquering arms
  • From pole to pole, by her ensnaring charms
  • Were quite consum’d; there lay imperial Rome,
  • That vanquish’d all the world, by her o’ercome;
  • Fetter’d was th’ old Assyrian lion there;
  • The Grecian leopard, and the Persian bear;
  • With others numberless, lamenting by,
  • Examples of the power of luxury.
  • With riotous banquets, sicknesses came in,
  • When death ’gan muster all his dismal band
  • Of pale diseases.