Court-virtues bear, like gems, the highest rate,
Born where Heav'n influence scarce can penetrate.
In life's low vale, the soil the virtues like,
They please as beauties, here as wonders strike.
I would not be like those Authors, who forgive themselves some particular lines for the sake of a whole Poem, and vice versa a whole Poem for the sake of some particular lines. I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.
The approach of night The skies yet blushing with departing light, When falling dews with spangles deck'd the glade, And the low sun had lengthen'd ev'ry shade.
She who ne'er answers till a husband cools, Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules; Charms by accepting, by submitting, sways, Yet has her humor most, when she obeys.
Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgement, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is PRIDE, the never-failing vice of fools.
Is there a parson much bemused in beer, a maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, a clerk foredoom'd his father's soul to cross, who pens a stanza when he should engross?
By music minds an equal temper know,
Nor swell too high, nor sink too low.
. . . .
Warriors she fires with animated sounds.
Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds.