Emotions and Feelings

Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumor of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more.

O Solitude! where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face?

O Solitude! where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face?

I praise the Frenchman [La Bruyère], his remark was shrewd— How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But grant me still a friend in my retreat Whom I may whisper—solitude is sweet.

I praise the Frenchman [La Bruyère], his remark was shrewd— How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But grant me still a friend in my retreat Whom I may whisper—solitude is sweet.

His wit invites you by his looks to come, But when you knock it never is at home.

A fool must now and then be right, by chance.

Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.

What peaceful hours I once enjoy’d! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill.

What peaceful hours I once enjoy’d! How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill.

When lovely woman stoops to folly, 5 And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy? What art can wash her guilt away?

Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of humankind 3 pass by.

They please, are pleas’d, they give to get esteem, Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem. 2

Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see, My heart untravel’d fondly turns to thee; Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain, And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, Or by the lazy Scheldt, or wandering Po.

For he counteracts the Devil, who is Death, by brisking about the life.

And now the matchless deed’s achiev’d, Determin’d, dar’d, and done.

For I bless God in the libraries of the learned and for all the booksellers in the world.

Where ask is have, where seek is find, Where knock is open wide.

This piercing cold I feel: my dead wife’s comb, in our bedroom under my heel… 1

Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune, He had not the method of making a fortune.

Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly riding o’er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes; Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm; Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind’s sway, That, hush’d in grim repose, expects his evening prey.

Ruin seize thee, ruthless King! Confusion on thy banners wait, Though fann’d by Conquest’s crimson wing They mock the air with idle state.

The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common sun, the air, the skies, To him are opening paradise.