A Complete Dictionary of Poetical Quotations: Comprising the Most Excellent ...

When fortune means to men most good,
She looks upon them with a threat'ning eye.
Shaks. King John.
Will fortune never come with both hands full,
But write her fair words still in foulest letters?
She either gives a stomach, and no food-
Such are the poor in health; or else a feast,
And takes away the stomach-such the rich,
That have abundance, and enjoy it not.

Fortune, the great commandress of the world,
Hath divers ways to enrich her followers:
To some she honour gives without deserving;
To other some, deserving, without honour;
Some wit, some wealth, and some wit without
wealth;

Some wealth without wit; some nor wit nor wealth,
But good smock faces, or some qualities
By nature, without judgment; with the which

Shaks. Henry IV. Part II. They live in sensual acceptation,
Fortune is merry,

And in this mood will give us any thing.
Shaks. Julius Cæsar.
This accident and flood of fortune
So far exceed all instance, all discourse,
That I am ready to distrust mine eyes,
And wrangle with my reason, that persuades me
To any other trust.

Shaks. Twelfth Night.

For herein fortune shows herself more kind
Than is her custom: it is still her use,
To let the wretch'd man outlive his wealth,
To view with hollow eye, and wrinkled brow,
An age of poverty.

Shaks. Merchant of Venice.
Wisdom and fortune combating together:
If that the former dare but what it can,
No chance may shake it.

Shaks. Antony and Cleopatra.
How fortune plies her sports, when she begins
To practise them! pursues, continues, adds,
Confounds, with varying her empassion'd moods!
Jonson's Sejanus.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Shakspeare.

All human business fortune doth command
Without all order; and with her blind hand,
She, blind, bestows blind gifts, that still have nurst,
They see not who, nor how, but still the worst.

Ben Jonson.
That fortune still must be with ill maintain'd,
Which at the first with any ill is gain'd.

Lord Brook's Alaham. Oh fortune! thou art not worth my least exclaim, And plague enough thou hast in tay own name: Do thy great worst, my frienas and I have arms, Though not against thy strokes, against thy harms. Dr. Donne.

And make show only without touch of substance
Chapman's All Fools.

Fortune's an under pow'r, that is herself
Commanded by desert. "Tis a mere vainness
Of our credulity to give her more
Than her due attribute; which is but servants
To an heroic spirit.

Nabb's Hannibal and Scipio

Wisdom, whose strong-built plots,
Leave nought to hazard, mocks thy futile pow'r;
Industrious labour drags thee by the locks,
Bound to his toiling car, and not attending
Till thou dispense, reaches his own reward:
Only the lazy sluggard yawning lies
Before the threshold, gaping for thy dole,
And licks the easy hand that feeds his sloth;
The shallow, rash, and unadvised man
Makes thee his state, disburthens all the follies
Of his misguided actions on thy shoulders.

Carew's Calum Britannicum.
Let not one look of fortune cast you down;
She were not fortune, if she still did frown:
Such as do braveliest bear her scorns awhile,
Are those on whom at last she most will smile.

Earl of Orrey's Henry V.
Fortune came smiling to my youth, and woo'd it,
And purpled greatness met my ripen'd years.
Dryden's All for Love.
Be juster, heav'ns! Such virtue punish'd thus,
Will make us think chance rules all above,
And shuffles with a random hand the lots
Which man is forc'd to draw.

Dryden's All for Love.
What trivial influences hold dominion
O'er wise men's counsels, and the fate of empire!
The greatest schemes that human wit can forge,
Or bold ambition dares to put in practice,
Depend upon our husbanding a moment,
And the light lasting of a woman's will;
As if the Lord of nature should delight
To hang this pond'rous globe upon a hair,
And bid it dance before a breath of wind.
Rowe's Lady Jane Grey.

Look into those they call unfortunate,

And closer view'd you'll find they are unwise:
Some flaw in their own conduct lies beneath,
And 't is the trick of fools to save their credit,
Which brought another language into use.
Young's Revenge.

Oft, what seems

A trifle, a mere nothing, by itself,

In some nice situation, turns the scale
Of fate, and rules the most important actions.
Thomson's Tancred and Sigismunda.

Fortune made up of toys and impudence,
That common judge that has not common sense,
But fond of business, insolently dares
Pretend to rule, yet spoils the world's affairs;
She's fluttering up and down, her favour throws
On the next met, nor minding what she does,
Nor why, nor whom she helps, nor merit knows;
Sometimes she smiles, then like a fury raves,
And seldom truly loves but fools or knaves.
Let her love whom she will, I scorn to woo her,
While she stays with me, I'll be civil to her;
But if she offers once to move her wings,
I'll fling her back all her vain gew-gaw things.
Buckingham.
On high, where no hoarse winds nor clouds resort,
The hood-wink'd goddess keeps her partial court,
Upon a wheel of amethyst she sits,

Gives and resumes, and smiles and frowns by fits:
In this still labyrinth around her lie
Spells, philters, globes, and schemes of palmistry;
A sigil in this hand the gipsy bears,
In t' other a prophetic sieve, and shears.

Garth's Dispensary.
Heav'n has to all allotted, soon or late,
Some lucky revolution of their fate:
Whose motions if we watch and guide with skill,
(For human good depends on human will)
Our fortune rolls as from a smooth descent,
And from the first impression takes its bent;
But if unseiz'd, she glides away like wind,
And leaves repenting folly far behind;
Now, now she meets you with a glorious prize,
And spreads her locks before her as she flies.

A hungry, lean-fac'd villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,
A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller;
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man; this pernicious slave,
Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer;
And gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,
And with no face, as 't were, outfacing me,
Cries out, I was possess'd.

Shaks. Comedy of Erro
Pray thee, maiden, hear him not!
Take thou warning by my lot,
Read my scroll, and mark thou all
I can tell thee of thy thrall.

Miss Landon.

I heard, as in a glorious dream,
A clarion thrill the startled air,
And saw an answering people stream

Through every noisy thoroughfare.
These were the old, whose hairs were few,
Or white with memory of the days
Of Egypt, Moscow, Waterloo,-

And now they sang the "Marseillaise!" The Bourbon's throne was trampled down, And France no longer knelt; but now, Struck with a patriot's hand the crown

From off the Orleans' dotard brow;Releas'd from slavery and tears

She rose and sang fair Freedom's praise, Till far along the future years

I heard the swelling "Marseillaise!"

Dr. Johnson's London. The word rolls on like a hurricane's breath"Down with the tyrant — come life or death

The sun rises bright in France,

And fair sets he.

All that the contest calls for;-spirit, strength,
The scorn of danger, and united hearts,
The surest presage of the good they seek.

-Slaves who once conceive the glowing thought | Stranger, new flowers in our vales are seen,
Of freedom, in that hope itself possess
With a dazzling eye, and a lovely green.
They scent the breath of the dewy morn:
They feed no worm, and they hide no thorn,
But revel and glow in our balmy air;
They are flowers which Freedom hath planted
there.
Mrs. Sigourney.

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an heritage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.

Wordsworth.

Lovelace To Althea, from prison.

What art thou, Freedom? Oh! could slaves
Answer from their living graves
This demand, tyrants would flee
Like a dream's dim imagery!
Thou art Justice-ne'er for gold
May thy righteous laws be sold,
As laws are in England: thou
Shieldest alike high and low.
Thou art Peace -never by thee
Would blood and treasure wasted be,
As tyrants wasted them when all
Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul!
Thou art Love: the rich have kist
Thy feet, and like him following Christ,
Given their substance to be free,
And through the world have follow'd thec.

Oh, joy to the world! the hour is come,
When the nations to freedom awake,
When the royalists stand agape and dumb,

And monarchs with terror shake!
Over the walls of majesty

"UPHARSIN" is writ in words of fire,

And the eyes of the bondsman, wherever they be,
Are lit with wild desire.

Soon shall the thrones that blot the world,
Like the Orleans, into the dust be hurl'd,
And the word roll on like a hurricane's breath,
Till the farthest slave hears what it saith –
Arise, arise, be free!

T. Buchanan Read.

Byron's Giaour.

In the long vista of the years to roll,

Let me not see my country's honour fade;

Oh! let me see our land retain its soul!

FREE WILL.

Ingrate, he had of me

Her pride in Freedom, and not Freedom's shade. All he could have: I made him just and right,

Keats.

Sun of the moral world! effulgent source
Of man's best wisdom and his steadiest force,
Soul-searching Freedom! here assume thy stand,
And radiate hence to every distant land.

Joel Barlow.

Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all th' ethereal powers

And spirits, both them who stood, and them who

fail'd;

Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell
Milton's Paradise Lost.

They therefore as to right belong'd,
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Their Maker, or their making, or their fate,
As if predestination over-rul'd
Their will, dispos'd by absolute decree
Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed
Their own revolt, not I; if I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their faults,
Which had no less prov'd certain unforeknown.
Milton's Paradise Lost.

God made thee perfect, not immutable,
And good he made thee, but to persevere
He left it in thy pow'r; ordain'd thy will
By nature free, not over-rul'd by fate
Inextricable, or strict necessity.

Difference as there is between beauty
And virtue, bodies and shadows, colours
And life, so great odds is there between love
And friendship.

Lilly's Endymion.

When adversities flow,
Then love ebbs: but friendship standeth stiffly
In storms. Time draweth wrinkles in a fair
Face, but addeth fresh colours to a fast
Friend, which neither heat, nor cold, nor mis'ry,
Nor place, nor destiny, can alter or
Diminish. O friendship! of all things the
Most rare, and therefore most rare, because mos
Excellent; whose comforts in misery
Are always sweet, and whose counsels in

Milton's Paradise Lost. Prosperity are ever fortunate.

A golden treasure is the tried friend;
But who may gold from counterfeits defend?
Trust not too soon, nor yet too soon mistrust:
With th' one thyself, with th' other thy friend thou
hurt'st,

Who twines betwixt, and steers the golden mean,
Nor rashly loveth, nor mistrusts in vain.

Mirror for Magistrates.
For all things, friendship excepted,
Are subject to fortune: love is but an
Eye-worm which only tickleth the head with
Hopcs and wishes: friendship's the image of
Eternity, in which there is nothing
Moveable - nothing mischievous; as much

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