18th-century Poet Quotes

It were a blessed sight to see That child become a willow tree, His brother trees among. He'd be four times as tall as me, And live three times as long.

All books avoid, for they
Are the disgrace of our humanity,
And the assassins of the human race.
Mark well my words: the true
Philosophy consists in growing fat.

Enter upon thy paths, O year!
Thy paths, which all who breathe must tread,
Which lead the Living to the Dead,
I enter; for it is my doom
To tread thy labyrinthine gloom;
To note who round me watch and wait;
To love a few; perhaps to hate;
And do all duties of my fate.

Bryan Procter
Bryan Procter
How happily, how happily, the flowers die away!
Oh! Could we but return to earth as easily as they.

How still the morning of the hallow'd day! Mute is the voice of rural labour, hush'd The ploughboy's whistle, and the milkmaid's song.

It is frequently of much importance, not to the comfort only, but to the recovery of the patient, that he should be enabled to look upon his Physician as his friend.

Thomas Gisborne
Thomas Gisborne
Wouldst thou view the Lion's den? Search afar from haunts of men — Where the reed-encircled rill, Oozes from the rocky hill, By its verdure far descried 'Mid the desert brown and wide.

That thorny path, those stormy skies, have drawn our spirits nearer; and rendered us, by sorrow's ties, each to the other dearer.

Bernard Barton
Bernard Barton
August 'twas the twenty-fifth,
Seventeen hundred and forty-six;
The Indians did in ambush lay,
Some very valiant men to slay,
The names of whom I'll not leave out.
Samuel Allen like a hero fout
And though he was so brave and bold,
His face no more shall we behold.

Let brisker youths their active nerves prepare
Fit their light silken wings and skim the buxom air.

Alas! Am I born for this,
To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil and pain!

Time's stern tide, with cold Oblivion's wave, Shall soon dissolve each fair, each fading charm.

Anna Seward
Anna Seward
And have they fixed the where and when?
And shall Trelawney die?
Here's twenty thousand Cornish men
Shall know the reason why!

A masquerade, a murdered peer,
His throat just cut from ear to ear—
A rake turned hermit—a fond maid
Run mad, by some false loon betrayed—
These stores supply the female pen,
Which writes them o'er and o'er again,
And readers likewise may be found
To circulate them round and round.

When gloaming treads the heels of day
And birds sit cowering on the spray,
Along the flowery hedge I stray,
To meet mine ain dear somebody.

Life let us cherish, while yet the taper glows,
And the fresh flow'ret pluck ere it close;
Why are we fond of toil and care?
Why choose the rankling thorn to wear?

I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven.

Harriette Wilson
Harriette Wilson
Of all the stages in a woman's life, none is so dangerous as the period between her acknowledgment of a passion for a man, and the day set apart for her nuptials.

This piercing cold I feel:
my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom
under my heel...

Forever seeking, never found,
In this wide varied scene;
Sole object of unceasing search,
While in this low terrene.
Yet vain the search, if in the heart
Some lurking passion dwell;
For this will hang with cypress wreath
Retirement's secret cell.
In vain the outward scene is calm,
In vain the world we fly;
If thou, in pure religion's garb,
Thy friendly aid deny.

Come, swift-wing'd Fancy, airy maid,
In varied, dazzling vest array'd,
Inspire thy vot'ry's lay;
Grant me thy flow'ry walks to tread,
To range thy summer-painted mead,
Or near thy fountain play.
Now led by thy resistless hand,
Or guided by thy fairy wand,
O'er yet untrodden space;
Or on thy pinions borne along,
The bright Ideas' flitting throngs
Pursue th' aerial race.

Elizabeth Bentley
Elizabeth Bentley
Hener was the hero-king,
Heaven-born, dear to us,
Showing his shield
A shelter for peace.

Esaias Tegnér
Esaias Tegnér
Pity the sorrows of a poor old man,
Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span;
Oh give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.

Love's pleasure lasts but a moment;
Love's sorrow lasts all through life.

I've seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling,
I've felt all its favours and found its decay;
Sweet was its blessing, kind its caressing,
But now it is fled, fled far, far away.