The Complete Art of Poetry ...

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Charles Rivington, 1718 - Criticism
 

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Page 348 - What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To fust in us unus'd.
Page 332 - Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge, And in the visitation of the winds Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds, That with the hurly death itself awakes...
Page 328 - O, who can hold a fire in his hand, By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite, By bare imagination of a feast?
Page 319 - And all the men and women merely players ; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms: And then the whining school-boy with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school.
Page 319 - Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court? Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, — The seasons...
Page 307 - Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love: Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues; Let every eye negotiate for itself, And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch, Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.
Page 300 - Heaven doth with us as we with torches do ; Not light them for themselves : for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike As if we had them not...
Page 330 - This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, Dear for her reputation through the world, Is now leas'd out (I die pronouncing it), Like to a tenement, or pelting farm: England, bound in with the triumphant sea, Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame, With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds: That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Page 331 - And thus still doing, thus he pass'd along. Duch. Alas ! poor Richard ! where rides he the while ? York. As in a theatre, the eyes of men, After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious : Even so, or with much more contempt, men's eyes Did scowl on Richard ; no man cried, God save him...
Page 319 - The seasons' difference : as the icy fang And churlish chiding of the winter's wind, Which when it bites and blows upon my body, Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say, This is no flattery : these are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am.