My hawk is tired of perch and hood,
My idle greyhound loathes his food,
My horse is weary of his stall,
And I am sick of captive thrall.
I wish I were as I have been
Hunting the hart in forests green,
With bended bow and bloodhound free,
For that's the life is meet for me!

The Lady of the Lake: Lay of the Imprisoned Huntsman,
Canto VI.

SIR W. SCOTT.

Oh! what delight can a mortal lack,
When he once is firm on his horse's back,
With his stirrups short, and his snaffle strong,
And the blast of the horn for his morning song!

The Hunter's Song. B. W. PROCTER (Barry Cornwall).

See from the brake the whirring pheasant springs,
And mounts exulting on triumphant wings;
Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound,
Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground.
Windsor Forest.

A. POPE.

But as some muskets so contrive it,
As oft to miss the mark they drive at,
And though well aimed at duck or plover,

Bear wide, and kick their owners over.

McFingal, Canto I.

HYPOCRISY.

J. TRUMBULL.

Oh, for a forty-parson power to chant

forty-parson po

Thy praise, Hypocrisy ! Oh, for a hymn

Loud as the virtues thou dost loudly vaunt,

Not practise!

Don Juan, Canto X.

For neither man nor angel can discern

Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks

Invisible, except to God alone,

LORD BYRON.

By his permissive will, through heaven and earth.

Paradise Lost, Bk. III.

MILTON.

Away, and mock the time with fairest show;
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 7.

SHAKESPEARE.

O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave?

Romeo and Juliet, Act iii. Sc. 2.

SHAKESPEARE.

Dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant

Can tickle where she wounds!

Cymbeline, Act i. Sc. 1.

SHAKESPEARE.

She that asks

Her dear five hundred friends, contemns them all,

And hates their coming.

The Task, Bk. II.

He seemed

W. COWPER.

For dignity composed and high exploit :

But all was false and hollow.

The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

An evil soul, producing holy witness,
a with a smiling cheek,

Is like a villain with

A goodly apple rotten at the heart.

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 3.

SHAKESPEARE.

But then I sigh, and with a piece of Scripture
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil :
And thus I clothe my naked villany

With odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ,
And seem a saint when most I play lay the devil.

King Richard III., Act i. Sc. 3.

SHAKESPEARE.

O villain, villain, smiling damnèd villain!
My tables,-meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 5.

SHAKESPEARE.

That practised falsehood under saintly shew, Deep malice to conceal, couched with revenge. Paradise Lost, Bk. IV.

MILTON.

Built God a church, and laughed his word to scorn.
Retirement.

W.COWPER.

And the devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.

The Devil's Thoughts.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!

Measure for Measure, Act iii. Sc. 2.

SHAKESPEARE.

T is too much proved that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 1.

I waive the quantum o' the sin,
The hazard of concealing:
But, och! it hardens a' within,

And petrifies the feeling.

SHAKESPEARE.

Epistle to a Young Friend.

IDLENESS.

R. BURNS.

'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain, "You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again." The Sluggard.

DR. I. WATTS.

Sloth views the towers of fame with envious eyes,
Desirous still, still impotent to rise.

The Judgment of Hercules.

W. SHENSTONE.

Their only labor was to kill the time
(And labor dire it is, and weary woe);
They sit, they loll, turn o'er some idle rhyme;
Then, rising sudden, to the glass they go,
Or saunter forth, with tottering step and slow :
This soon too rude an exercise they find;
Straight on the couch their limbs again they throw,
Where hours on hours they sighing lie reclined,
And court the vapory god, soft breathing ing in the wind.
The Castle of Indolence, Canto I.

J. THOMSON.

Leisure is pain; take off our chariot wheels,
How heavily we drag the load of life !
Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain,
It makes us wander, wander earth around

To fly that tyrant, thought.

Night Thoughts, Night II.

To sigh, yet feel no pain,

DR. E. YOUNG.

To weep, yet scarce know why;

To sport an hour with Beauty's chain,

Then throw it idly by.

The Blue Stocking.

T. MOORE.

A lazy lolling sort,

Unseen at church, at senate, or at court,
Of ever-listless idlers, that attend

No cause, no trust, no duty, and no friend.
There too, my Paridell! she marked thee there,
Stretched on the rack of a too easy chair,
And heard thy everlasting yawn confess
The pains and penalties of idleness.

The Dunciad, Bk. IV.

A. POPE.

An idler is a watch that wants both hands;
As useless if it goes as if it stands.

Retirement.

W.COWPER.

There is no remedy for time misspent;
No healing for the waste of idleness,
Whose very languor is a punishment
Heavier than active souls can feel or guess.

As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath,

Receives the lurking principle of death,

The young disease, that must subdue at length,

Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.

Essay on Man, Epistle II.

Diseases desperate grown

By desperate appliance are relieved,

Or not at all.

Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 3.

So when a raging fever burns,

A. POPE.

SHAKESPEARE.

We shift from side to side by turns,
And 't is a poor relief we gain

To change the place, but keep the pain.

Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Bk. II. Hymn 146.

IMAGINATION.

Within the soul a faculty abides,
That with interpositions, which would hide
And darken, so can deal that they become
Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt
Her native brightness. As the ample moon,
In the deep stillness of a summer even
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove.
Burns, like an unconsuming fire of light,
In the green trees; and, kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own.

The Excursion, Bk. IV.

W. WORDSWORTH.

O for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!

King Henry V., Chorus.

SHAKESPEARE.

Hark, his hands the lyre explore!

Bright eyed Fancy, hovering o'er,
Scatters from her pictured urn

Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.

Progress of Poesy.

One of those passing rainbow dreams

T. GRAY.

Half light, half shade, which Fancy's beams
Paint on the fleeting mists that roll,

In trance or slumber, round the soul.

Lalla Rookh.

T. MOORE.

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,
And fevers into false creation :-where,
Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized ?
In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?

Where are the charms and virtues which we dare
Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,
The unreached Paradise of our despair,

Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen,

And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?

Childe Harold, Canto IV.

LORD BYRON.

We figure to ourselves The thing we like, and then we build it up As chance will have it, on the rock or sand; For thought is tired of wandering o'er the world, And home-bound Fancy runs her bark ashore. Philip Van Artevelde, Pt. I. Act i. Sc. 5. SIR H. TAYLOR.