17th-century Poet Quotes

Thrice happy time,
Best portion of the various year, in which
Nature rejoiceth, smiling on her works
Lovely, to full perception wrought!

Like beauteous flowers which vainly waste their scent
Of odours in unhaunted deserts.

Letters, from absent friends, extinguish fear, Unite division, and draw distance near; Their magic force each silent wish conveys, And wafts embodied though, a thousand ways: Could souls to bodies write, death's pow'r were mean, For minds could then meet minds with heav'n between.

When we are conscious of the least comparative merit in ourselves, we should take as much care to conceal the value we set upon it, as if it were a real defect; to be elated or vain upon it is showing your money before people in want.

Colley Cibber
Colley Cibber
Uncertain ways unsafest are, and doubt a greater mischief than despair.

John Denham
John Denham
The works of nature will bear a thousand views and reviews: the more frequently and narrowly we look into them, the more occasion we shall have to admire their beauty.

Francis Atterbury
Francis Atterbury
Like an ambassador that beds a queen
With the nice caution of a sword between.

John Cleveland
John Cleveland
All trades did shew their skill in this, Each wise an Engineer: The Mairess took the tool in hand, The maids the stones did bear.

E'er time and place were, time and place were not, When Primitive Nothing something straight begot, Then all proceeded from the great united — What.

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
A quiet mediocrity is still to be preferred before a troubled superfluity.

John Suckling
John Suckling
Hark! She is called, the parting hour is come. Take thy farewell, poor world! Heaven must go home....

Ask me no more, where those stars light,
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become, as in their sphere.

Thomas Carew
Thomas Carew
'Tis hard we should be by the men despised,
Yet kept from knowing what would make us prized;
Debarred from knowledge, banished from the schools,
And with the utmost industry bred fools.

And one false step entirely damns her fame.
In vain with tears the loss she may deplore,
In vain look back on what she was before;
She sets like stars that fall, to rise no more.

Under this stone, Reader, survey
Dead Sir John Vanbrugh's house of clay.
Lie heavy on him, Earth! for he
Laid many heavy loads on thee!