Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe
When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;...
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
Thy naked beauties - give me a cigar!
The music, and the banquet, and the wine-- The garlands, the rose odors, and the flowers, The sparkling eyes, and flashing ornaments-- The white arms and the raven hair--the braids, And bracelets; swan-like bosoms, and the necklace, An India in itself, yet dazzling not.
...And these vicissitudes come best in youth;
For when they happen at a riper age,
People are apt to blame the Fates, forsooth,
And wonder Providence is not more sage.
Adversity is the first path to truth:
He who hath proved war, storm, or woman's rage,
Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty,
Has won experience which is deem'd so weighty.
What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now.
Books, Manuals, Directives, Regulations. The geometries that circumscribe your working life draw norrower and norrower until nothing fits inside them anymore.
Sorrow preys upon Its solitude, and nothing more diverts it From its sad visions of the other world Than calling it at moments back to this. The busy have no time for tears.
What opposite discoveries we have seen! (Signs of true genius, and of empty pockets.) One makes new noses, one a guillotine, One breaks your bones, one sets them in their sockets; But vaccination certainly has been A kind antithesis to Congreve's rockets.
As soon seek roses in December, ice in June, Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff Believe a woman or an epitaph Or any other thing that’s false Before you trust in critics.
Yet truth will sometimes lend her noblest fires, And decorate the verse herself inspires: This fact, in virtue's name, let Crabbe attest,- Though Nature's sternest painter, yet the best.