'Twas strange that one so young should thus concern His brain about the action of the sky; If you think 'twas philosophy that this did, I can't help thinking puberty assisted.
What makes a regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the same mass of mob? Their arms, their dresses, their banners, and the art and artificial symmetry of their position and movements.
What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.
A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping, Dirty and dusty, but as wide as eye Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping In sight, then lost amidst the forestry Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy; A huge, dun cupola, like a fools-cap crown On a fool's head - and there is London Town.
Let no man grumble when his friends fall off, As they will do like leaves at the first breeze; When your affairs come round, one way or t'other, Go to the coffee house, and take another.
When people say, "I've told you fifty times," They mean to scold, and very often do; When poets say, "I've written fifty rhymes," They make you dread that they'll recite them too; In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes; At fifty love for love is rare, 't is true, but then, no doubt, it equally as true is, a good deal may be bought for fifty Louis.
Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction: if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange! How differently the world would men behold!