Joanna Baillie Quotes

Sweet sleep be with us, one and all!
And if upon its stillness fall
The visions of a busy brain,
We'll have our pleasure o'er again,
To warm the heart, to charm the sight,
Gay dreams to all! good night, good night.

The tyrant now
Trusts not to men: nightly within his chamber
The watch-dog guards his couch, the only friend
He now dare trust.

The hushed winds wail with feeble moan
Like infant charity.

The brave man is not he who feels no fear,
For that were stupid and irrational;
But he, whose noble soul its fear subdues,
And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from.

Think'st thou there are no serpents in the world
But those who slide along the grassy sod,
And sting the luckless foot that presses them?
There are who in the path of social life
Do bask their spotted skins in Fortune's sun,
And sting the soul.

Some men are born to feast, and not to fight;
Whose sluggish minds, e'en in fair honor's field,
Still on their dinner turn—
Let such pot-boiling varlets stay at home,
And wield a flesh-hook rather than a sword.

Oh, swiftly glides the bonnie boat, Just parted from the shore,
And to the fisher's chorus-note, Soft moves the dipping oar!

But woman's grief is like a summer storm,
Short as it violent is.

A willing heart adds feather to the heel,
And makes the clown a winged Mercury.

Words of affection, howsoe'er express'd,
The latest spoken still are deem'd the best.