I'gin to be a-very of the sun,

And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.
Shaks. Macbeth.

I pull in resolution: and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend,

That lies like truth.

Shaks. Macbeth.

They have ty'd me to a stake; I cannot fly, But bear-like, I must fight the course.

Shaks. Macbeth.

I am one, my liege,

Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
Have so incens'd, that I am reckless what
I do to spite the world.

Shaks. Macbeth.

And I another,

So weary with disasters, tugg'd with fortune, That I would set my life on any chance

To mend it, or be rid on 't.

Let order die,

And let this world no longer be a stage,
To feed contention in a lingering act:
But let one spirit of the first-born Cain
Reign in all bosoms; that, each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,
And darkness be the burier of the dead!

Shaks. Henry IV. Part II
For now I stand as one upon a rock,
Environ'd with a wilderness of sca;
Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave,
Expecting ever when some envious surge
Will in his brinish bowels swallow him.

Shaks. Titus Andronicus.

Thus roving on

In confus'd march forlorn, th' advent'rous bands
With shuddering horror pale, and eyes agnast,
View'd their lamentable lot, and found
No rest.

Shaks. Macbeth.

Milton's Paradise Lost.

All sat mute,

( sovereign mistress of true melancholy,

beam

Rocks, dens and caves; but I in none of these

There hey him laid

Gnashing for anguish, and despite and shame, To find himself not matchless, and his pride Humbled by such rebuke.

Let her rave,

All hope is lost

Of my reception into grace; what worse,
For where no hope is left, is left no fear.
Milton's Paradise Regained.
Consider how the desperate fight;
Despair strikes wild, but often fatal too-
And in the mad encounter wins success.

Havard's Regulus.

All judging heav'n,

Was there no bolt, no punishment above?-
No, none is equal to despairing love:

Hell loudly owns it, and the damn'd themselves
Smile to behold a wretch more curs'd than they.
Havard's Scanderbeg.

My loss is such as cannot be repair'd;
And to the wretched, life can be no mercy.
Dryden's Marriage à la Mode.

Tell me why, good heaven,
Thou mad'st me what I am, with all the spirit,
Aspiring thoughts and elegant desires,
That fill the happiest man? Ah! rather, why
Did'st thou not form me sordid as my fate,
Base-minded, dull and fit to carry burdens?
Why have I sense to know the curse that's on me?
Is this just dealing, nature?

Otway's Venice Preserved. Talk not of comfort, 'tis for lighter ills; I will indulge my sorrows, and give way To all the pangs and fury of despair.

winds,

A general wreck of nature now would please me
Rowe's Royal Convert
Whether first nature, or long want of peace,
Has wrought my mind to this, I cannot tell;
But horrors now are not displeasing to me;
I like this rocking of the battlements.

Rage on, ye winds; burst clouds, and waters roar
You bear a just resemblance of my fortune,
And suit the gloomy habit of my soul!

Young's Revenge.

Why let them come: let in the raging torrent:
I wish the world would rise in arms against me;
For I must die; and I would die in state.

Young's Busiria
Creation sleeps; 't is as the general pulse
Of life stood still, and nature made a pause
An awful pause! prophetic of her end,
And let her prophecy be soon fulfill'd;
Fate drop the curtain; I can lose no more.

Young's Night Thoughts

O Lucius, I am sick of this bad world!
The day-light and the sun grow painful to me.
Addison's Cato.

Methinks we stand on ruin; nature shakes
About us; and the universal frame's
So loose, that it but wants another push
To leap from its hinges.

Lee's Edipus.

What miracle Can work me into hope! Heav'n here is bankrupt, The wond'ring gods blush at the want of power, And quite abash'd confess they cannot help me. Lee's Mithridates. Curs'd fate! malicious stars! you now have drain'd Yourselves of all your poisonous influence; Ev'n the last baleful drop is shed upon me! Lee's Mithridates.

The day too short for my distress; and night,
Ev'n in the zenith of her dark domain,
Is sunshine to the colour of my fate.

Young's Night Thoughts

With woful measures wan despair-
Low sullen sounds his grief beguil'd;
A solemn, strange, and mingled air!
'Twas sad by fits, by starts 't was wild.

Collins's Passions When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.

Dr. Johnson's Irene But dreadful is their doom whom doubt has drive To censure fate, and pious hope forego: Like yonder blasted boughs by lightning riven, Perfection, beauty, life, they never know, But frown on all that puss, a monument of w Beattie's Minsirel

Mine after ift! what is mine after-life!

My day is closed! the g100m of night is come A hopeless darkness settles o'er my fate.

Joanna Baillie's Basil.
Welcome rough war! with all thy scenes of blood;
Thy roaring thunders, and thy dashing steel!
Welcome once more! what have I now to do
But play the brave man o'er again, and die!
Joanna Baillie's Basil.

Be it what it may, or bliss or torment,
Annihilation, dark, and endless rest,

Or some dread thing, man's wildest range of thought
Hath never yet conceived, that change I'll dare
Which makes me any thing but what I am.
Joanna Baillie's Basil.

I would have time turn'd backward in his course,
And what is past ne'er to have been: myself
A thing that no existence ever had.
Canst thou do this for me?

Joanna Baillie's Rayner.

Ɔ that I were upon some desert coast!
Where howling tempests and the lashing tide
Would stun me into deep and senseless quiet.
Joanna Baillie's De Montford.
Come, madness! come unto me, senseless death!
I cannot suffer this! here, rocky wall,
Scatter these brains, or dull them!

Joanna Baillie's De Montford.

O that I had been form'd An idiot from the birth! a senseless changeling, Who eats his glutton's meals with greedy haste, Nor knows the hand who feeds him! Joanna Baillie's De Montford. He hangs upon me like a dead man's grasp On the wreck'd swimmer's neck.

Joanna Baillie's Ethwald. Full many a storm on this grey head has beat; And now, on my high station do I stand, Like the tired watchman in his rocked tower, Who looketh for the hour of his release. I'm sick of worldly broils, and fain would rest With those who war no more.

Joanna Baillie's Ethwald. O night, when good men rest, and infants sleep! Thou art to me no season of repose, But a fear'd time of waking more intense, Of life more keen, of misery more palpable. Joanna Baillie's Ethwald. The fountain of my heart dried up within me,With nought that ioved me, and with nought to love

What would'st thou more? I shrink not from the question.

I am a wretch, and proud of wretchedness,
'Tis the sole earthly thing that cleaves to me.
Maturin's Bertram.

The wretched have no country; that dear name
Comprises home, kind kindred, fostering friends,
Protecting laws, all that binds man to man-
But none of these are mine;-I have no country-
And for my race, the last dread trump shall wake
The sheeted relics of mine ancestry,
In the bright blazon of their stainless coats
Ere trump of herald to the armed lists,
Calls their lost child again.

Maturin's Bertram.

And in that deep and utter agony,
Though then, than ever most unfit to die,
I fell upon my knees and pray'd for death.

Maturin's Bertram. The storm for Bertram!-and it hath been with me, Dealt with me branch and bole, bared me to th' roots,

And where the next wave bears my perish'd trunk In its dread lapse, I neither know nor reck of. Maturin's Bertram

Is there no forest, Whose shades are dark enough to shelter us; Or cavern rifted by the perilous lightning, Where we must grapple with the tenanting wolf To earn our bloody lair?- there let us bide, Nor hear the voice of man nor call of heaven. Maturin's Bertram. Behold me, earth! what is the life he hunts for? Come to my cave, thou human hunter, come; For thou hast left thy prey no other lair, But the bleak rock, or howling wilderness; Cheer up thy pack of fanged and fleshed hounds, Flash all the flames of hell upon its darkness, Then enter if thou darest.

Lo, there the bruised serpent coils to sting thee, Yea, spend his life upon the mortal throe. Maturin's Bertram

To be thus

tood upon ne desert earth alone.

Waste not thine orison, despair
Is mightier than thy pious prayer:

tains!

Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye!
And thou the bright eye of the universe,
That openest over all, and unto all
Art a delight-thou shin'st not on my heart!

Byron's Manfred.

Think'st thou existence doth depend on time?
It doth; but actions are our epochs: mine
Have made my days and nights imperishable,
Endless and all alike, as sands on the shore,
Innumerable atoms; and one desert,
Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break,
But nothing rests save carcasses and wrecks,
Rocks and the salt surf weeds of bitterness.
Byron's Manfred.

Look on me in my sleep, Or watch my watchings-come and sit by me! My solitude is solitude no more, But peopled with the furies; - I have gnash'd My teeth in darkness till returning morn, Then cursed myself till sunset;- I have pray'd For madness as a blessing-'t is denied me. Byron's Manfred. They who have nothing more to fear may well Indulge a smile at that which once appall'd; As children at discover'd bugbears.

Byron's Sardanapalus. Who thundering comes on blackest steed? With slacken'd bit and hoof of speed; Beneath the clattering iron's sound, The cavern'd echoes wake around

in lash for lash, and bound for bound; The foam that streaks the courser's side, Seems gather'd from the ocean-tide; Though weary waves are sunk to rest, l'here's none within his rider's breast, And though to-morrow's tempest lower,

is calmer than thy heart, young Giaour! Byron's Giaour.

And hoped that peril might not prove in vain.
He raised his iron hand to heaven, and pray'd
One pitying flash to mar the form it made:
His steel and impious prayer attract alike—
The storm roll'd onward, and disdain'd to strike;
Its peal wax'd fainter-ceased-he felt alone,
As if some faithless friend had spurn'd his groan.
Byron's Corsair.
One fatal remembrance, one sorrow which throws
Its bleak shade alike o'er our joys and our woes:
To which life nothing darker or brighter can bring,
For which joy has no balm and affliction no sting.
Moore.

Beware of desperate steps!-the darkest day,
Live till to-morrow, will have pass'd away.

Like one within a charnel cast,

Cowper.

I hear but dirges ringing for the deaa—
Walk all the time with hand in hand of Death'
Mrs. F Oakes Smith

I have given suck; and know

How tender 't is to love the babe that milks me

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluck'd my nipple from its boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn
As you have done to this.

I said to Sorrow's awful storm,

Shaks. Macbeth

That beat against my breast,
Rage on- thou may'st destroy this form,
And lay it low at rest;

But still the spirit that now brooks
Thy tempest raging high,
Undaunted on its fury looks,
With steadfast eye.

DETRACTION.

Mrs. Stoddard.

'Tis not the wholesome sharp morality,
Or modest anger of a satiric spirit,

That hurts or wounds the body of a state;
But the sinister application

Of the malicious, ignorant, and base
Interpreter; who will distort, and strain
The gen'ral scope and purpose of an author,
To his particular and private spleen.

Jonson's Poetaster. Who stabs my name, would stab my person too, Did not the hangman's axe lie in the way.

Crown's Henry VII. Happy are they that hear their detractions, And can put them to mending.

Shaks. Much ado.

Detraction's a bold monster, and fears not
To wound the fame of princes, if it find
But any blemish in their lives to work on.
Massinger.

To you I shall no trophy raise

From other men's detraction or dispraise:
That jewel never had inherent worth,
Which ask'd such foils as these to set it forth.
Bishop King

DEW.

And that same dew, which sometimes on the buds
Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls,
Stood now within the pretty flow'rets' eyes,
Like tears, that did their own disgrace bewail.
Shaks. Midsummer Night's Dream.

I must go seek some dew-drops nere,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Shaks. Midsummer Night's Dream