ADMIRATION.
What find I here?
Fair Portia’s counterfeit?—What
demi-god
Hath come so near creation!
Move these eyes!
Or, whether, riding on the
balls of mine,
Seem they in motion?—Here
are sever’d lips,
Parted with sugar breath:
so sweet a bar
Should sunder such sweet friends.—Here,
in her hair,
The painter plays the spider,
and hath woven
A golden mesh, t’ entrap
the hearts of men
Falter than gnats in cobwebs.—But
her eyes—
How could he see to do them!
having made one,
Methinks it should have power
to steal both his,
And leave itself unfinish’d!
HAUGHTINESS.
Make thy demands to those
that own thy power!
Know, I am still beyond thee.
And tho’ fortune
Has strip’d me of this
train, this pomp of greatness;
This outside of a king, yet
still my soul,
Fix’d high, and on herself
alone dependant,
Is ever free and royal:
and, even now,
As at the head of battle—does
defy thee!
CONTEMPT.
Away! no woman could descend
so low,
A skipping, dancing, worthless
tribe you are;
Fit only for yourselves.
You herd together;
And when the circling glass
warms your vain hearts,
You talk of beauties that
you never saw,
And fancy raptures that you
never knew.
RESIGNATION.
Yet, yet endure—nor
murmur, O my foul!
For, are not thy transgressions
great and numberless?
Do they not cover thee, like
rising floods?
And press then, like a weight
of waters, down?
Does not the hand of righteousness
afflict thee?
And who shall plead against
it? who shall say
To Pow’r Almighty, Thou
hast done enough;
Or bid his dreadful rod of
vengeance it stay?—
Wait, then, with patience,
till the circling hours
Shall bring the time of thy
appointed rest
And lay thee down in death.
IMPATIENCE.
Oh! rid me of this torture, quickly there, My Madam, with the everlasting voice. The bells, in time of pestilence, ne’er made Like noise, or were in that perpetual motion. ---------------------------------All my house, But now, steam’d like a bath, with her thick breath, A lawyer could not have been heard, nor scarce Another woman, such a hail of words She has let fall.
REMORSE AND DESPAIR.