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By weakening toil an hoary age o'ercome, See thy decrease, and hasten to the tomb.

Prior's Soloman.

But do these worlds display their beams, or guide
Their orbs, to serve thy use, to please thy pride?
Thyself but dust, thy stature but a span,
A moment thy duration, foolish man!
As well may the minutest emmet say,
That Caucasus was rais'd to pave his way;
The snail, that Lebanon's extended wood
Was destin'd only for his walk and food;
The vilest cockle, gaping on the coast
That rounds the ample seas, as well may boast
The craggy rock projects above the sky,
That he in safety at its foot may lie;
And the whole ocean's confluent waters swell,
Only to quench his thirst, and blanch his shell.
Prior's Soloman.

Condemn'd to sacrifice his childish years
To babbling ignorance, and empty fears;
To pass the riper period of his age,
Acting his part upon a crowded stage;
To lasting toils expos'd, and endless cares,
To open dangers, and to secret snares;
To malice, which the vengeful foc intends,
And the more dangerous love of sceming friends.
Prior's Soloman.

Brutes find out where their talents lie;
A bear will not attempt to fly;
A founder'd horse will oft debate,
Before he tries a five-barr'd gate;
A dog by instinct turns aside

forbear,

Who sees the ditch too deep and wide;
But man we find the only creature
Who, led by folly, combats nature;
Who, when she loudly cries.
With obstinacy fixes there;
And, where his genius least inclines,
Absurdly bends his whole designs.

Fond man! the vision of a moment made!
Dream of a dream! and shadow of a shade!
Young's Paraphrase of Job.
Father of mercies! why from silent earth
Did'st thou awake, and curse me into birth?
Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night,
And make a thankless present of thy light?
Push into being a reverse of thee,
And animate a clod with misery?

Young's Last Day.

O what a miracle to man is man,
Triumphantly distress'd! what joy! what dread!
Alternately transported, and alarm'd!

What can preserve my life! or what destroy!
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave;
Legions of angels can't confine me there.

Young's Night Thoughts
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful is man!
How passing wonder He, who made him such!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes.
From different natures marvellously mixt,
Connexion exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguisht link in being's endless chain!
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal, sully'd, and absorpt!
Tho' sully'd, and dishonour'd, still divine!
Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! insect infinite!
A worm! a god!

Young's Night Thoughts.

All promise is poor dilatory man, And that thro' ev'ry stage: when young indeed, In full content, we, sometimes, nobly rest, Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish, As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. At thirty man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; Swift on Poetry. At fifty chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve ; In all the magnanimity of thought Resolves; and re-resolves; then dics the same. Young's Night Thoughts. Swift. Heav'n's sov'reign saves all beings, but himself, That hideous sight,—a naked human heart.

As Rochefoucault his maxims drew
From nature, I believe them true;
They argue no corrupted mind
In him: the fault is in mankind.

Vain human kind! fantastic race! Thy various follies who can trace? Self-love, ambition, envy, pride, Their empire in our hearts divide.

Swift.

Tais vast and solid earth, that blazing sun,
Those skies, thro' which it rolls, must all have end.
What then is man? the smallest part of nothing.
Young's Revenge,

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Let error act, opinion speak,

And want afflict, and sickness break,

And anger burn, dejection chill,
And joy distract, and sorrow kill,

Till, arm'd by care, and taught to mow,
Time draws the long destructive blow.

Parnell's Allegory on Man.
Mankind one day serene and free appear;
The next, they're cloudy, sullen and severe;
New passions, new opinions still excite;

And what they like at noon, they leave at night.
They gain with labour what they quit with ease;
And health, for want of change, becomes disease:
Religion's bright authority they dare,
And yet are slaves to superstitious fear.
They counsel others, but themselves deceive,
And though they're cozen'd still, they still believe.
So false their censure, fickle their esteem,
This hour they worship, and the next blaspheme.

Garth.

Not always actions show the man; we find
Who does a kindness, is not therefore kind;
Perhaps prosperity becalm'd his breast,
Perhaps the wind just shifted from the east:
Not therefore humble he who seeks retreat,
Pride guides his steps, and bids him shun the
great:

Who combats bravely is not therefore brave,
He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave:
Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise,
His pride in reasoning, not in acting, lies.

Pope's Moral Essays.

In vain the sage with retrospective eye,
Would from th' apparent "what," conclude the
"why,"

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Infer the motive from the deed, and show,
That which we chanc'd, was what we meant to do.
Behold if fortune or a mistress frowns,
Some plunge in business, others shave their crowns;
To ease the soul of one oppressive weight,
This quits an empire, that embroils a state:
The same adust complexion has impell'd
Charles to the convent, Philip to the field.

Pope's Moral Essays.
See the same man in vigour, in the gout;
Alone, in company in place, or out;
Early at business, and at hazard late;
Mad at a fox-chase, wise in a debate;
Drunk at a borough, civil at a ball;
Friendly at Hackney, faithless at Whitehall.
Pope's Moral Essays.

Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes,
Tenets with books, and principles with times.
Pope's Moral Essays.
What crops of wit and honesty appear
From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear!
See anger, zeal, and fortitude supply;
Ev'n avarice, prudence; sloth, philosophy;
Lust, through some certain strainers well refin'd,
Is gentle love, and charms all womankind;
Envy, to which the ignoble mind's a slave,
Is emulation in the learn'd or brave;
Nor virtue, male or female, can we name,
But what will grow on pride or grow on shame.
This nature gives us (let it check our pride,)
The virtue nearest to our vice ally'd;
Reason the bias turns to good from ill,
And Nero reigns a Titus if he will.
The fiery soul abhorr'd in Catiline,
In Decius charms, in Curtius is divine:
The same ambition can destroy or save,
And make a patriot as it makes a knave.

Pope's Essay on Man.

The fur that warms a monarch, warm'd a bear.
While man exclaims, "sce all things for my use!"
"See man for mine!" replies a pamper'd goose:
And just as short of reason he must fall,
Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.

Know nature's children all divide her care;

Pope's Essay on Man.

Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods,
To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods:
For some, his interest prompts him to provide,
For some his pleasure, yet for more his pride:
All feed on one vain patron, and enjoy
Th' extensive blessing of his luxury.
That very life his learned hunger craves,
He saves from famine, from the savage saves;
Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast,
And, till he ends the being, makes it blest:
Which sees no more the stroke, or feels the pain,
Than favour'd man by touch ethereal slain.
The creature had his feast of life before;
Thou too must perish when thy feast is o'er!
Pope's Essay on Man

See him from nature rising slow to art!
To copy instinct there was reason's part:
Thus then to man the voice of nature spake
Go, from the creatures thy instructions take;
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield
Learn from the beasts the physics of the field,
Thy arts of building from the bee receive;
Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave,
Learn of the little Nantilus to sail,

Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.
Pope's Essay on Man

Behold the child by nature's kindly law
Pleas'd with a rattle, tickled with a straw;
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite;
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage;
And beads and pray'r-books are the toys of age;
Pleas'd with this bauble still, as that before;
Till tir'd he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er.
Pope's Essay on Man.
When the proud steed shall know why man
restrains

His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains;
When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,
Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god;
Then shall man's pride and dullness comprehend
His actions, passions, being's use and end;
Why doing, suff'ring, check'd, impell'd; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.

Pope's Essay on Man.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan:
The proper study of mankind is man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great,
With too much knowledge for the sceptic's side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god or beast.

Man, who madly deems himself the lord
Of all, is nought but weakness and dependence.
This sacred truth, by sour experience taught,
Thou must have learnt, when, wandering all alone,
Each bird, each insect, flitting thro' the sky,
Was more sufficient for itself than thou.
Thomson's Coriolanus.
Allure the people;

Train them by every art: poise every temper:
Avarice will sell his soul: buy that and mould it.
Weakness will be deluded; these grow eloquent.
Is there a tottering faith? grapple it fast
By flatt'ry: and profusely deal thy favours,
Threaten the guilty. Entertain the gay.
Frighten the rich. Find wishes for the wanton:
And reverence for the godly;-let none 'scape
thee.
Hill's Merope.

Men are machines, with all their boasted freedom,
Their movements turn upon some favourite passion;
Let art but find the foible out,

We touch the spring, and wind them at our
pleasure.
Brooke's Gustavus Vasa

The way to conquer men is by their passions;
Catch but the ruling foible of their hearts,
And all their boasted virtues shrink before you.
Tolson's Earl of Warwick

Pope's Essay on Man. Man's feeble race what ills await,

Superior beings when of late they saw
A mortal man unfold all nature's law,
Admir'd such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And show'd a Newton as we show an ape.
Pope's Essay on Man.

A man so various that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong,
Was every thing by starts, and nothing long.
But in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon.
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks, that died in thinking;
Bless'd madman, who could every hour employ
In something new to wish, or to enjoy!
In squand'ring wealth was his peculiar art,
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.

Spectator.

What is the mind of man? A restless scene
Of vanity and weakness; shifting still,
As shift the lights of our uncertain knowledge;
Or as the various gale of passion breathes.
Thomson's Coriolanus.
Thus they rejoice, nor think
Ihat, with to-morrow's sun, their annual toil
Kegins again the never-ceasing round.

Thomson's Seasons.

Labour and penury, the racks of pain,
Disease and sorrow's sweeping train,

And death, sad refuge from the storms of fate.
Gray's Progress of Poesy.

How vain the ardour of the crowd,
How low, how little are the proud,
How indigent the great!

Gray's Spring.

How few are found with real talents bless'd,
Fewer with nature's gifts contented rest.
Man from his sphere eccentric starts astray,
All hunt for fame; but most mistake the way.

Churchill's Rosciad

Then what is man? and what man sceing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush
And hang his head, to think himself a man.
Cowper's Task.

I remember as her bier
Went to the grave, a lark sprung up aloft,
And soar'd amid the sunshine calling
So full of joy, that to the mourner's ear,
More mournfully than dirge or passing bell,
His joyful carol came, and made us feel
That of the multitude of beings, none
But man was wretched!

Southey's Joan of Arc.

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Affliction one day as she hark'd to the roar
Of a stormy and struggling billow,

Drew a beautiful form on the sand of the shore
With the branch of a weeping willow.
Jupiter, struck with the noble plan,
As he roam'd on the verge of the ocean,
Breath'd on the figure, and calling it man,
Endued it with life and with motion.
A creature so glorious in mind and in frame,
So stampt with each parent's impression,
Between them a point of contention became,
Each claiming the right of possession.

He is mine, says affliction, I gave him his birth,
I alone am his cause of creation;

The materials were furnish'd by me, answer'd earth;

I gave him, said Jove, - animation.
The gods all assembled in solemn divan,
After hearing each claimant's petition,
Pronounced a definitive verdict on man,
And thus settled his fate's disposition.
Let affliction possess her own child till the woes
Of life seem to harass and goad it;
After death-give his body to earth whence it rose,
And his spirit to Jove who bestow'd it.

The mind of man is vastly like a hive ;

Sheridan.

His thoughts so busy ever — all alive!
But here the simile will go no further;
For bees are making honey, one and all;
Man's thoughts are busy in producing gall,
Committing as it were self-murder.

Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.

Man's an ass I say;

Too fond of thunder, lightning, storm and rain:
He hides the charming cheerful ray
That spreads a smile on hill and plain.
Dr. Wolcot's Peter Pindar.

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The hunting tribes of earth and air,
Respect the brethren of their birth;
Nature, who loves the claim of kind,
Less cruel chase to each assigned;
The falcon, poised on soaring wing,
Watches the wild-duck by the spring;
The slow hound wakes the fox's lair,
The grey-hound presses on the hare;
The eagle pounces on the lamb,
The wolf devours the fleecy dam;
Even tiger fell, and sullen bear,
Their likeness and their lineage spare,
Man, only, mars kind nature's plan,
And turns the fierce pursuit on man.

Crabbe

Burns

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Admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep,— for here
There is such matter for all feeling :- Man!
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear.
Byron's Childe Harold.
Born to be plough'd with years, and sown with

cares,

And reap'd by death, lord of the human soil.
Byron's Herren and Earth.

Maturer manhood now arrives,
And other thoughts come on,
But with the baseless hopes of youth,
Its generous warmth is gone;
Cold, calculating cares succeed
The timid thought, the wary deed,
The full realities of truth;
Back on the past he turns his eye,
Remembering, with an envious sigh,
The happy dreams of youth.
So reaches he the latter stage
Of this our mortal pilgrimage,
With feeble step and slow;
New ills that latter stage await,
And old experience learns too late,
That all is vanity below.

Mortal! howe'er thy lot be cast,

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Southey's Poems.

Once in the flight of ages past,
There liv'd a man:- and WHO WAS HE?

That man resembled thec.

James Montgomery.

'Tis man's pride,

His highest, worthiest, noblest boast,

The privilege he prizes most,
To stand by helpless woman's side.

Mrs. Holford's Margaret of Anjou. The crown upon his forehead set

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Beneath the flaunting robe of sin, Through poverty and squalid shame,

Thou lookest on the man within:

On man, as man, retaining yet,
Howe'er debas'd, and soil'd, and dim,

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