Those that were up themselves, kept others low;
Those that were low themselves, held others hard,
Ne suffered them to ryse or greater grow:
But every one did strive his fellow down to throw.
Spenser's Fairy Queen.!
Nature, that framed us of four elements,
Warring within our breasts for regimen,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure ev'ry wand'ring planet's course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Wills us to wear ourselves, and never rest
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
The sweet fruition of a heav'nly crown.
Marlo's 1st part of Tamerlane the Great.
Who soars too near the sun, with golden wings,
Melts them;-to ruin his own fortune brings.
Shaks. Cromwell.
Thriftless ambition! that will ravin up
Thine own life's means.
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition: By that sin fell the angels; how can man then, The image of his maker, hope to win by't? Shaks. Henry VIII.
I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, This many summers in a sea of glory: But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride At length broke under me; and now has left me, Weary, and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. Shaks. Henry VIII. Vain pomp, and glory of this world, I hate ye; I feel my heart new open'd: O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours! There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, 'That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have; And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again.
Shaks. Henry VIII. "Tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber upwards turns his face:
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then into the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did nscend.
Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way; thou would'st be great;
Art not without ambition; but without
The illness should attend it: what thou would'st highly,
That would'st thou holily: would'st not play false, And yet would'st wrongly win.
Shaks. Macbeth. Follow I must, I cannot go before, While Gloster bears this base and humble mind. Were I a man, a duke, and next ofood, I would remove these tedious stumbling blocks, And smooth my way upon their headless necks. Shaks. Henry VI. Away with scrupulous wit! now arms must rule, And fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns
A friend, in his creation, to himself,
And may, with fit ambition, conceive
The greatest blessings, and the brightest honours
Appointed for him, if he can achieve them
The right and noble way.
Philip Massinger's Guardian. Our natures are like oil; compound us with any thing
Yet still we strive to swim upon the top.
Beaumont and Fletcher's Loyal Subject.
Be not with honour's gilded baits beguil'd,
Nor think ambition wise, because 'tis brave;
For though we like it, as a forward child,
"Tis so unsound, her cradle is her grave.
Sir W. Davenant's Gondibert.
Ambition's monstrous stomach does increase
By eating, and it fears to starve, unless
It still may feed, and all it sees devour:
Ambition is a lust that's never quenched,
Grows more enflamed, and madder by enjoyment.
Otway's Caius Marius
Ambition, like a torrent, ne'er looks back,
It is a swelling, and the last affection
A high mind can put off. It is a rebel
Both to the soul and reason, and enforces
All laws, all conscience; treads upon religion,
And offers violence to nature's self.
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell.
Milton's Paradise Lost.
His trust was with th' Eternal to be deem'd
Equal in strength, and rather than be less
Car'd not to be at all; with that care lost
Went all his fear of God, or hell, or worse.
He reck'd not.
Milton's Paradise Lost. Lifted up so high
Thou lying phantom! whither hast thou lured me'
Ev'n to this giddy height; where now I stand
Ambition is not tir'd with toil nor cloy'd with Forsaken, comfortless; with not a friend
Sir W. Davenant's Playhouse to let.
Ambition is the mind's immodesty.
In whom my soul can trust.
Brown's Barbaroɛsa
What's all the gaudy glitter of a crown;
What but the glaring meteor of ambition,
Sir W. Davenant's Gondibert. That leads the wretch benighted in his erros,
Points to the gulf, and shines upon destruction.
Brooke's Gustavus l'as
Ambition is a spirit in the world,
That causes all the ebbs and flows of nations,
Oh! that some villager, whose early toil
Lifts the pe.urious morsel to his mouth,
Had slain'd my birth! ambition had not the
Thus step'd 'twixt me and heav'n.
Brooke's Gustavus Vasa.
Ambition is at a distance
A goodly prospect, tempting to the view;
The height delights us, and the mountain top
Looks beautiful, because 't is nigh to heaven:
But we ne'er think how sandy 's the foundation;
What storms will batter, and what tempests shake
Like eastern kings, a lazy state they keep,
And, close confin'd to their own palace, sleep.
The gods, to curse Pamela with her pray'rs,
Gave the gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares,
The shining robes, rich jewels, beds of state,
And to complete her bliss,-a fool for mate.
She glares in balls, front boxes, and the ring,
A vain, unquiet, glittering, wretched thing!—
Pride, pomp, and state, but reach her outward
part;
Otway's Venice Preserved. She sighs, and is no duchess at her heart.
Why now my golden dream is out-
Ambition, like an early friend, throws back
My curtains with an eager hand, o'erjoyed
To tell me what I dreamt is true a crown,
Thou bright reward of ever-daring minds;
Oh! how thy awful glory fills my soul!
Nor can the means that got thee dim thy lustre;
For, not men's love, fear pays thee adoration,
And fame not more survives from good than evil
Th' aspiring youth, that fir'd th' Ephesian dome,
Outlives, in fame, the pious fool that rais'd it.
Cibber's Richard III.
Ambition is an idol, on whose wings
Great minds are carried only to extreme;
To be sublimely great, or to be nothing.
Southern's Loyal Brother. Tamerlane. The world!-'t would be too little for thy pride!
Thou wouldst scale heaven Bajazet.I would: - away! my soul
Disdains thy conference.
By nature half divine, soar to the stars,
And hold a near acquaintance with the gods.
Rowe's Royal Convert.
What is ambition but desire of greatness?
And what is greatness but extent of power?
But lust of power's a dropsy of the mind,
Whose thirst increases, while we drink to quench it,
"Till swoln and stretch'd by the repeated draught,
We burst and perish.
Higgon's Generous Conqueror.
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes,
The glorious fault of angels and of gods;
Thence to their images on earth it flows,
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows.
Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull suilen pris'ners in the body's cage;
Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years
Useless unsec... as lamps in sepulchres;
Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains pil'd on mountains, to the skies?
Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madınen in the heaps they raise.
Pope's Essay on Man
Unnumber'd suppliants crowd preferment's gate
Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great,
Delusive fortune hears the incessant call,
They mount, they shine,-evaporate and fall.
Dr. Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes.
This sov'reign passion, scornful of restraint,
Even from the birth affects supreme command,
Swells in the breast, and with resistless force,
O'erbears cach gentler motion of the mind.
Dr. Johnson's Irene
Alas! ambition makes my little less:
Embitt'ring the possess'd: why wish for more?
Wishing, of all employments, is the worst;
Philosophy's reverse, and health's decay!
Young's Night Thoughts.
Thy bosom burns for power;
What station charms thee? I'll install thee there;
"Tis thine. And art thou greater than before?
Then thou before wast something less than man
Has thy new post betray'd thee into pride?
That treach'rous pride betrays thy dignity,
That pride defames humanity, and calls
The being mean, which staffs or strings can raise.
Young's Night Thoughts
Not kings alone,
Each villager has his ambition too;
No sultan prouder than his fetter'd slave:
Slaves build their little Babylons of straw,
Echo the proud Assyrian in their hearts,
And cry-" Behold the wonders of my might!"
And why? because immortal as their lord;
And souls immortal must for ever heave
At something great; the glitter or the gold
The praise of mortals or the praise of Heaven.
Young's Night Thoughts
The seals of office glitter in his eyes;
You have deeply ventured,
But all must do so who would greatly win.
Byron's Doge of Venice.
Ay,-father!-I have had those earthly visions
And noble aspirations in my youth,
To make my own the mind of other men,
The enlightener of nations: and to rise
I knew not whither-it might be to fall;
But fall, even as the mountain cataract,
Which having leapt from its more dazzling height,
Even in the foaming strength of its abyss,
Lies low but mighty still.-But this is past,
My thoughts mistook themselves.
He climbs, he pants,-he grasps them. At his He who ascends to mountain tops, shall find
Close at his heels, a demagogue ascends,
And with a dextrous jerk soon twists him down,
And wins them, but to lose them in his turn.
Cowper's Task.
Is it delusion this?
Or wears the mind of man within itself
A conscious feeling of its destination?
What say these suddenly imposed thoughts,
Which mark such deepen'd traces in the brain
On vivid real persuasion, as do make
My nerved foot tread firmer on the earth,
And my dilating form tower on its way?
Joanna Baillie's Ethwald.
I am as one
Who doth attempt some lofty mountain's height,
And having gained what to the upcast eye
The summit's point appear'd, astonish'd sees
Its cloudy top, majestic and enlarged,
Towering aloft, as distant as before.
Joanna Baillie's Ethwald.
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind,
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above, the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath, the earth and ocean spread;
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,
And thus reward the toils which to those summits
Byron's Childe Horold.
But quict to quick bosoms is a hell,
And there hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion in the soul which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire,
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And but once kindled, quenchless evermore
Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire
Fatal to him who bears,-to all who ever bore.
This makes the madmen, who have made men mad
By their contagion, conquerors and kings,
Founders of sects and systems, to whom add
Sophists, bards, statesmen, all unquiet things
Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs,
And are themselves the fools to those they fool;
Envied, yet not enviable! what stings
Joanna Baillie's Ethwald. Are theirs! one breast laid open were a school
Which would unteach mankind, the lust to shine
Byron's Childe Harola
It ever is the marked propensity
Of restless and aspiring minds to look
Into the stretch of dark futurity.
To th' expanded and aspiring soul,
To be but still the thing it long has been,
's misery, c'en though enthron'd it were
Under the cope of high imperial state.
Joanna Baillie's Ethwald.
The cheat, ambition, cager to espouse
Dominion, courts it with a lying show,
And shines in borrow'd pomp to serve a turn:
But the match made, the farce is at an end;
Their breath is agitation, and their life
A storm whereon they ride to sink at last,
And yet so nurs'd and bigoted to strife,
That should their days, surviving perils past,
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast
With sorrow and supineness, and so die;
Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste
With its n flickering or a sword laid by,
Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.
Byron's Childe Harold.
These quenched a moment her ambitious thirst-
So Arab deserts drink in summer's rain
In vain!--As fall the dews on quenchless sands,
Blood only serves to wash ambitious hands.
Byron's Don Juan.
Before I knew thee, Mary,
Ambition was my angel: I did hear
For ever its witched voices in mine ear;
My days were visionary-
My nights were like the slumbers of the mad :— And every dream swept o'er me glory clad.
Willis' Poems. What is ambition? 'Tis a glorious cheat! Angels of light walk not so dazzlingly The sapphire walls of Heaven.
America! half-brother of the World!
With something good and bad of every land;
Greater than thee have lost their seat-
Greater scarce none can stand.
Land of the West! though passing brief The record of thine age,
Thou hast a name that darkens all
On History's wide page!
Let all the blasts of fame ring out-
Thine shall be loudest far:
Let others boast their satellites-
Thou hast the morning star.
Thou hast a name whose characters
Of light shall ne'er depart;
'Tis stamped upon the dullest brain,
And warms the coldest heart;
A war-cry fit for any land,
Where Freedom's to be won; Land of the West! it stands aloneIt is thy Washington.
Columbia, child of Britain,-noblest child;
I praise the growing lustre of thy youth,
And fain would see thy great heart reconciled
To love the mother of so blest a birth:
For we are one Columbia! still the same
In lineage, language, laws, and ancient fame,
The natural nobility of earth.
Thou noblest scion of an ancient root, Born of the forest-king! spread forth, spread forth,
High to the stars thy tender leaflets shoot, Deep dig thy fibres round the ribs of earth! From sea to sea, from south to icy North,
It must ere long be thine, through good or ill, To stretch thy sinewy boughs: Go,-wondrous child!
The glories of thy destiny fulfil ;— Remember then thy mother in her age,
Rights cheaply earn'd with blood. Still, still, Shelter her in the tempest, warring wild:
Better, though each man's life-blood were a river,
That it should flow and overflow, than creep
Through thousand lazy channels in our veins,
Dam'd, like the dull canal, with locks and chains,
And moving, as a sick man in his sleep,
Three paces and then faltering :-better be
Where the extinguish'd Spartans still are free,
In their proud charnel of Thermopylæ,
Than stagnate in our marsh,-or o'er the deep
Fly, and one current to the ocean add,
One spirit to the souls our fathers had,
One freeman more America, to thee!
Stand thou with us when all the nations rage So furiously together!-we are one:
And, through all time, the calm historic page Shall tell of Britain blest in thee her son.
Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,
The queen of the world and the child of the skies,
Timothy Dwight.
Here the free spirit of mankind, at length,
Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place
A limit to the giant's unchained strength?
Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?
Bryant's Poems
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