Hope tells a flattering tale,
Delusive, vain, and hollow,
Ah, let not Hope prevail,
Lest disappointment follow.
_The Universal Songster_. MISS WROTHER.
As distant prospects please us, but when near
We find but desert rocks and fleeting air.
_The Dispensatory, Canto III_. SIR S. GARTH.
We're charmed with distant views of happiness,
But near approaches make the prospect less.
_Against Enjoyment_. T. YALDEN.
The wretched are the faithful; 't is their fate
To have all feelings, save the one, decay,
And every passion into one dilate.
_Lament of Tasso_. LORD BYRON.
Alas! the breast that inly bleeds
Hath naught to dread from outward blow:
Who falls from all he knows of bliss
Cares little into what abyss.
_The Giaour_. LORD BYRON.
Full little knowest thou that hast not tried,
What hell it is in suing long to bide:
To lose good dayes, that might be better spent;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.
_Mother Hubberd's Tale_. E. SPENSER.
A thousand years a poor man watched
Before the gate of Paradise:
But while one little nap he snatched,
It oped and shut. Ah! was he wise?
_Oriental Poetry: Swift Opportunity_. W.R. ALGER.
Defend me, therefore, common sense, say I,
From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up.
_Task, Bk. III_. W. COWPER.
Like Dead Sea fruit that tempts the eye,
But turns to ashes on the lips!
_Lalla Rookh: The Fire Worshippers_. T. MOORE.
Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore,
All ashes to the taste.
_Childe Harold, Canto III_. LORD BYRON.
At threescore winters' end I died,
A cheerless being, sole and sad;
The nuptial knot I never tied,
And wish my father never had.
_From the Greek_. W. COWPER'S _Trans_.
The cold--the changed--perchance the dead--anew,
The mourned, the loved, the lost--too many!--yet how few!
_Childe Harold, Canto IV_. LORD BYRON.
Do not drop in for an after-loss.
Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquered woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
_Sonnet XC_. SHAKESPEARE.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me.
_Childe Harold, Canto III_. LORD BYRON.