The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 404, December 12, 1829 · Chapter 4Old Poets
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Shame sticks ever close to the ribs of honour,
Great men are never found after it:
It leaves some ache or other in their names still,
Which their posterity feels at ev'ry weather.
MIDDLETON.
From damned deeds abstain,
From lawless riots and from pleasure's vain;
If not regarding of thy own degree,
Yet in behalf of thy posterity.
For we are docible to imitate.
Depraved pleasures though degenerate.
Be careful therefore least thy son admit
By ear or eye things filthy or unfit.
LODGE.
Shame follows sin, disgrace is daily given,
Impiety will out, never so closely done,
No walls can hide us from the eye of heaven,
For shame must end what wickedness begun,
Forth breaks reproach when we least think thereon.
DANIELL.
A wise man poor
Is like a sacred book that's never read,
T' himself he lives, and to all else seems dead.
This age thinks better of a gilded fool,
Than of thread-bare saint in Wisdom's school
DEKKAR.
She was a woman in the freshest age,
Of wondrous beauty, and of bounty rare,
With goodly grace, and comely personage.
That was on earth not easy to compare,
Full of great love; but Cupid's wanton snare
As hell she hated, chaste in work and will,
Her neck and breast were ever open bare,
That aye thereof her babes might suck their fill,
The rest was all in yellow robes arrayed still,
A multitude of babes about her hung,
Playing their sports that joyed her to behold,
Whom still she fed, while they were weak and young,
But thrust them forth still as they waxed old,
And on her head she wore a tire of gold;
Adorn'd with gems and ouches fair,
Whose passing price unneath was to be told,
And by her side there sat a gentle pair
Of turtle-doves, she sitting in an ivory chair.
SPENSER.
It is a work of Charity God knows,
The reconcilement of two mortal foes.
MIDDLETON.
When the air is calm and still, as dead and deaf
And under heaven quakes not an aspen leaf:
When seas are calm and thousand vessels fleet
Upon the sleeping seas with passage sweet;
And when the variant wind is still and lone
The cunning pilot never can be known:
But when the cruel storm doth threat the bark
To drown in deeps of pits infernal dark,
While tossing tears both rudder, mast, and sail,
While mounting, seems the azure skies to scale,
While drives perforce upon some deadly shore,
There is the pilot known, and not before.
T. HUDSON.
The knotty oak and wainscot old,
Within doth eat the silly worm:
Even so a mind in envy cold,
Always within itself doth burn.
FITZ JEFFRY.
Opinion is as various as light change,
Now speaking courtlike, friendly, straight as strange,
She's any humour's perfect parasite,
Displeas'd with her, and pleas'd with her delight.
She is the echo of inconstancy,
Soothing her no with nay, her ay with yea.
GUILPIN.
Happy is he that lives in such a sort
That need not fear the tongues of false report.
EARL OF SURREY.
By care lay heavy Sleep the cousin of Death,
Flat on the ground, and still as any stone;
A very corpse, save yielding forth a breath,
Small keep took he whom Fortune frown'd on,
Or whom she lifted up into a throne
Of high renown; but as a living death
So dead alive, of life he drew the breath.
SACKVILLE.
War the mistress of enormity,
Mother of mischief, monster of deformity,
Laws, manners, arts, she breaks, she mars, she chases,
Blood, tears, bowers, towers, she spills, smites, burns, and rases,
Her brazen teeth shake all the earth asunder;
Her mouth a fire brand, her voice is thunder;
Her looks are lightning, every glance a flash,
Her fingers guns, that all to powder plash,
Fear and despair, flight and disorder, coast
With hasty march before her murderous host,
As burning, rape, waste, wrong, impiety,
Rage, ruin, discord, horror, cruelty,
Sack, sacrilege, impunity, pride.
Are still stern consorts by her barbarous side;
And poverty, sorrow, and desolation,
Follow her army's bloody transmigration.
SYLVESTER.
Of all chaste birds the phoenix doth excel,
Of all strong beasts the lion bears the bell,
Of all sweet flowers the rose doth sweetest smell.
Of all pure metals gold is only purest,
Of all the trees the pine hath highest crest.
Of all proud birds the eagle pleaseth Jove,
Of pretty fowls kind Venus likes the dove,
Of trees Minerva doth the olive move.
LODGE.