For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.

Poems. 253

Prediction.
Against ill chances, men are ever merry;
But heaviness foreruns the good event.* 19-iv. 2.
254

Experience.
Our own precedent passions do instruct us
What levity's in youth.

27-i. 1. 255

Distrust.

Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt.

5-i. 5. 256

Decaying nature of Love.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick, or snuff, that will abate it;
And nothing is at a like goodness still ;
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too-much.

36-iv. 7. 257

Time produces ingratitude. Time hath a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes; Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done: Perseverance Keeps honour bright: To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery.

26-iii. 3 258 The present opportunity to be taken.

Take the instant way;
For honour travels in a straight so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast : keep then the path ;
For emulation hath a thousand sons,
That one by one pursue: If you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,

Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost;-
Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O’er-run and trampled on.

26-iii. 3. 259

Farewell and Welcome. Time is like a fashionable host, That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand; And with his arms out-stretch'd, as he would fly, Grasps-in the comer: Welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing.

26-iii. 3. 260 The praise of Virtue consists in action.

0, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was ! For beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time. 26-iii. 3. 261

Prevalence of appearances. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, That all, with one consent, praise new-born gawds,* Though they are made and moulded of things past; And give to dust, that is a little gilt, More laud than giltt o'er-dusted.

26-iii. 3. 262

Solemnity.

All solemn things Should answer solemn accidents. Triumphs for nothing, and lamenting toys, f Is jollity for.apes, and grief for boys. 31-iv. 2. 263

Prosperity and Adversity. Prosperity is the very bond of love; Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together Affliction alters.

One of these is true : I think affliction may subdue the cheek, But not take in the mind.

264

Refined Love.
Nature is fine in love: and, where 'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.*

36-iv. 5.

265 The effects of Poverty and Riches.

Twinn'd brothers of one womb, Whose procreation, residence, and birth, Scarce is dividant,-touch them with several fortunes; The greater scorns the lesser: Not nature, To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune, But by contempt of nature.t Raise me this beggar, and denude that lord ; The senator shall bear contempt hereditary, The beggar native honour. It is the pasture lards the browser's sides, The want that makes him lean.

27-iv. 3.

266

Sarcasm.
He, that a fool doth very wisely hit,
Doth very foolishly, although he smart,
Not to seem senseless of the bob: if not,
The wise man's folly is anatomized
Even by the squand'ring glances of the fool. I

10-i. 7. 267

Wisdom and folly. To be generous, guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts, that you deem cannon-bullets. There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove.

268

Jests.
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it.

8-v. 2.

269

Folly, its effects.
None are so surely caught,* when they are catch'd,
As wit turn’d fool : folly, in wisdom hatch'd,
Hath wisdom's warrant, and the help of school ;
And wit's own grace to grace a learned fool.
The blood of youth burns not with such excess,
As gravity's revolt to wantonness.
Folly in fools bears not so strong a note,
As foolery in the wise, when wit doth dote ;
Since all the power thereof it doth apply,
To prove, by wit, worth in simplicity 8-v. 2.
270 Customs, new, heedlessly followed.

New customs,
Though they be never so ridiculous,
Nay, let them be unmanly, yet are follow'd.

25-i. 3. 271

Fashion. Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity, (So it be new, there's no respect how vile,) That is not quickly buzz'd into the ears? 17-ii. 1. 272

Hollow friendship. The great man down, you mark, his favourite flies ; The poor advanced makes friends of enemies. And hitherto doth love on fortune tend : For who not needs, shall never lack, a friend ; And who in want a hollow friend doth try, Directly seasons him his enemy.

36-iii. 2. 273

Melancholy. Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster ? Sleep, when he wakes ? and creep into the jaundice By being peevish!

274 Power, loss of it, is loss of homage. 'Tis certain, greatness, once fallen out with fortune, Must fall out with men too: What the declined is, He shall as soon read in the eyes of others, As feel in his own fall: for men, like butterflies, Show not their mealy wings, but to the summer; And not a man, for being simply man, Hath any honour; but honour for those honours That are without him, as place, riches, favour, Prizes of accident as oft as merit: Which when they fall, as being slippery standers, The love that lean'd on them as slippery too, Do one pluck down another, and together Die in the fall.

26-iii. 3.

[ing;

275 Love, in its spring and in its maturity. My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seemI love not less, though less the show appear : That love is merchandised, whose rich esteeming The owner's tongue doth publish every where. Our love was new, and then but in the spring, When I was wont to greet it with my lays; As Philomel in summer's front doth sing, And stops his pipe in growth of riper days; Not that the summer is less pleasant now Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, But that wild music burdens every bough, And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

Poems. 276

Conscience. Who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin ? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life; But that the dread of something after death,The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns -puzzles the will; And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of?