Society and the World

Men of England, wherefore plow For the lords who lay ye low?

Men of England, wherefore plow For the lords who lay ye low?

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

To know nor faith, nor love nor law; to be Omnipotent but friendless is to reign.

The good want power, but to weep barren tears. The powerful goodness want: worse need for them. The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom; And all best things are thus confused with ill.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automaton.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automaton.

Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automaton.

[Of Napoleon:] Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones, Whose table earth—whose dice were human bones.

He is all-powerful, must all-good, too, follow? I judge but by the fruits—and they are bitter— Which I must feed on for a fault not mine.

The antique Persians taught three useful things— To draw the bow, to ride, and speak the truth.

Society is now one polish’d horde, Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.

When Bishop Berkeley said “there was no matter,” And proved it—’twas no matter what he said.

Not so Leonidas and Washington, Whose every battlefield is holy ground, Which breathes of nations saved, not worlds undone.

Earth! render back from out thy breast A remnant of our Spartan dead! Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a new Thermopylae.

The mountains look on Marathon, And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free.

Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, ’Tis woman’s whole existence.

Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure.

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded That all the Apostles would have done as they did.

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded That all the Apostles would have done as they did.

Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art.

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

The Cincinnatus of the West, Whom envy dared not hate, Bequeathed the name of Washington To make man blush there was but one!