Give me mine angle, we 'll to the river; there,
My music playing far off, I will betray
Tawny-finned fishes; my bended hook shall pierce
Their shiny jaws.

Antony and Cleopatra, Act ii. Sc. 5.

SHAKESPEARE.

His angle-rod made of a sturdy oak;
His line a cable which in storms ne'er broke;
His hook he baited with a dragon's tail,
And sat upon a rock, and bobbed for whale.

Upon a Giant's Angling.

ANIMALS.

Merchant of Venice, Act iv. Sc. 1.

A harmless necessary cat.

W. KING.

SHAKESPEARE.

The little dogs and all,

A. POPE.

Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.

King Lear, Act iii. Sc. 6.

SHAKESPEARE.

How, in his mid-career, the spaniel struck,
Stiff, by the tainted gale, with open nose,
Outstretched and finely sensible, draws full,
Fearful and cautious, on the latent prey.

The Seasons: Autumn.

J. THOMSON.

A horse! a horse! My kingdom for a horse ! King Richard III., Act v. Sc. 4.

SHAKESPEARE.

The courser pawed the ground with restless feet, And snorting foamed, and champed the golden bit. Palamon and Arcite, Pt. III.

J. DRYDEN.

Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,
Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide:
Look, what a horse should have he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

Venus and Adonis.

SHAKESPEARE.

Oft in this season too the horse, provoked
While his big sinews full of spirits swell,
Trembling with vigor, in the heat of blood,
Springs the high fence. his nervous chest,
Luxuriant and erect, the seat of strength!

The Seasons: Summer.

J. THOMSON.

Champing his foam, and bounding o'er the plain, Arch his high neck, and graceful spread his mane. The Courser.

SIR R. BLACKMORE.

Is it the wind those branches stirs?
No, no! from out the forest prance
A trampling troop; I see them come!
In one vast squadron they advance!

I strove to cry,-my lips were dumb.
The steeds rush on in plunging pride;
But where are they the reins to guide!
A thousand horse, and none to ride!
With flowing tail, and flying mane,

Wide nostrils, never stretched by pain,
Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein,
And feet that iron never shod,

And flanks unscarred by spur or rod,
A thousand horse, the wild, the free,
Like waves that follow o'er the sea,
Came thickly thundering on.

Mazeppa.

LORD BYRON.

I holde a mouses herte nat worth a leek.
That hath but oon hole for to sterte to.

Preamble, Wyves Tale of Bath.

CHAUCER.

When now, unsparing as the scourge of war,
Blast follow blasts and groves dismantled roar;
Around their home the storm-pinched cattle lows,
No nourishment in frozen pasture grows.

The Farmer's Boy: Winter.

R. BLOOMFIELD.

Rural confusion! on the grassy bank
Some ruminating lie; while others stand
Half in the flood, and, often bending, sip
The circling surface. In the middle droops
The strong laborious ox, of honest front,
Which incomposed he shakes; and from his sides
The troublous insects lashes with his tail,

Returning still.

The Seasons: Summer.

J. THOMSON.

Tossed from rock to rock,

Incessant bleatings run around the hills.
At last, of snowy white, the gathered flocks
Are in the wattled pen innumerous pressed,
Head above head: and ranged in lusty rows,
The shepherds sit, and whet the sounding shears.

The Seasons: Summer.

J. THOMSON.

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.

Essay on Man, Epistle I.

A. POPE.

Welcome, ye shades! ye bowery thickets, hail!...
Delicious is your shelter to the soul,

As to the hunted hart the sallying spring,
Or stream full-flowing, that his swelling sides

Laves, as he floats along the herbaged brink.

The Seasons: Autumn.

A poor sequestered stag,

J. THOMSON.

That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish;

and the big round tears

Coursed one another down his innocent nose

In piteous chase.

As You Like It, Act ii. Sc. 1.

SHAKESPEARE.

Cruel as Death, and hungry as the Grave!
Burning for blood! bony, and gaunt, and grim!
Assembling wolves in raging troops descend;
And, pouring o'er the country, bear along,
Keen as the north wind sweeps the glossy snows.

All is their prize.

The Seasons: Winter.

J. THOMSON.

ANTHOLOGY.

Infinite riches in a little room.

The Jew of Malta, Act i.

Odyssey.

APPARITION.

C. MARLOWE.

Thin, airy shoals of visionary ghosts.

HOMER. Trans. of POPE.

My people too were scared with eerie sounds,
A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls,
A noise of falling weights that never fell,
Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand,
Door-handles turned when none was at the door,
And bolted doors that opened of themselves;

And one betwixt the dark and light had seen
Her, bending by the cradle of her babe.

The Ring.

A. TENNYSON.

Great Pompey's shade complains that we are slow, And Scipio's ghost walks unavenged amongst us! Cato, Act ii. Sc. 1.

J. ADDISON.

Now it is the time of night,
That the graves, all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite,
In the church-way paths to glide.

Midsummer Night's Dream, Act v. Sc. 1.

SHAKESPEARE.

For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards.

Midsummer Night's Dream, iii. 2.

APPEARANCE.

SHAKESPEARE.

Such was Zuleika! such around her shone

The nameless charms unmarked by her alone;
The light of love, the purity of grace,

The mind, the music breathing from her face,
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole,

And oh! that eye was in itself a Soul.

Bride of Abydos, Canto I.

LORD BYRON.

There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple;
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,

Good things will strive to dwell with 't.

The Tempest, Act i. Sc. 2.

SHAKESPEARE.

Exceeding fair she was not; and yet fair
In that she never studied to be fairer

Than Nature made her; beauty cost her nothing,
Her virtues were so rare.

All Fools, Act i. Sc. 1.

G. CHAPΜΑΝ.

Her glossy hair was clustered o'er a brow
Bright with intelligence, and fair and smooth;
Her eyebrow's shape was like the aërial bow,
Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth,
Mounting, at times, to a transparent glow,
As if her veins ran lightning.

Don Juan, Canto I.

LORD BYRON.

The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers!

Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 1.

SHAKESPEARE.

They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-faced villain,

A mere anatomy, a mountebank,

A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller,
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,

A living-dead man.

Comedy of Errors, Act v. Sc. 1.

SHAKESPEARE.

Falstaff sweats to death,

And lards the lean earth as he walks along;
Were 't not for laughing, I should pity him.

K. Henry IV., Pt. I. Act ii. Sc. 2.

SHAKESPEARE.

Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

Julius Cæsar, Act i. Sc. 2.

SHAKESPEARE.

Seemed washing his hands with invisible soap
In imperceptible water.

HORATIO. I saw him once: he was a goodly king.
HAMLET. He was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again.
Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 2.

On his bold visage middle age

SHAKESPEARE.

Had slightly pressed his signet sage,
Yet had not quenched the open truth,
And fiery vehemence of youth;

Forward and frolic glee was there,
The will to do, the soul to dare,

The sparkling glance, soon blown to fire

Of hasty love or headlong ire.

The Lady of the Lake, Canto I.

SIR W. SCOTT.