C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Waller

As Egypt does not on the clouds rely

But to the Nile owes more than to the sky;

So what our earth and what our heaven denies

Our ever constant friend, the sea supplies.

The taste of hot Arabia’s spice we know,

Free from the scorching sun that makes it grow;

Without the worm in Persia’s silks we shine;

And without planting, drink of every vine,

To dig for wealth we weary not our limbs.

Gold, though the heaviest metal hither swims,

Ours is the harvest where the Indians mow.

We plough the deep, and reap what others sow.

Could we forbear dispute, and practice love,

We should agree, as angels do above.

“His kingdom come!” For this we pray in vain,

Unless He does in our affections reign.

How fond it were to wish for such a King,

And no obedience to His sceptre bring,

Whose yoke is easy, and His burthen light;

His service freedom, and His judgments right.

Music so softens and disarms the mind

That not an arrow does resistance find.

Seeming devotion does but gild a knave,

That’s neither faithful, honest, just, nor brave;

But where religion does with virtue join,

It makes a hero like an angel shine.

The Fear of God is freedom, joy, and peace;

And makes all ills that vex us here to cease.

The soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d,

Lets in new light through chinks that time has made;

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,

As they draw nearer to their eternal home.

While we converse with her, we mark

No want of day, nor think it dark.

All things but one you can restore; the heart you get returns no more.

But virtue too, as well as vice, is clad in flesh and blood.

Fade, flowers, fade! Nature will have it so; ’tis but what we in our autumn do.

Gods, that never change their state, vary oft their love and hate.

Happy is she that from the world retires, and carries with her what the world admires.

Happy the innocent whose equal thoughts are free from anguish as they are from faults.

He, like Amphion, makes those quarries leap into fair figures from a confused heap.

Ingenious to their ruin, every age improves the art and instruments of rage.

Lampoons, like squibs, may make a present blaze; but time and thunder pay respect to bays.

Noble Pity held his hand awhile, and to their choice gave space whether they would prove his valor or his grace.

Soft words, with nothing in them, make a song.

The coming spring would first appear, and all this place with roses strew, if busy feet would let them grow.

Vexed sailors curse the rain for which poor shepherds prayed in vain.

What use of oaths, of promise, or of test, where men regard no God but interest?

When religion doth with virtue join, it makes a hero like an angel shine.

With wisdom fraught; not such as books, but such as practice taught.

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