If weakness may excuse, What murderer, what traitor, parricide, Incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it? All wickedness is weakness; that plea, therefore, With God or man will gain thee no remission.
But what more oft in nations grown corrupt,
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty,
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.
O fairest of creation, last and best Of all God's works, creature in whom excelled Whatever can to sight or thought be formed, Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, Defaced, deflow'red, and now to death devote? Paradise Lost
Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Cyriack, whose Grandsire on the Royal Bench Of British Themis, with no mean applause Pronounced and in his volumes taught our Laws, Which others at their Bar so often wrench