John Conington Quotes

None knows the reason why this curse
Was sent on him, this love of making verse.

May Heaven, if virtue claim its thought,
If justice yet avail for aught; Heaven, and the sense of conscious right, With worthier meed your acts requite!

Death takes the mean man with the proud;
The fatal urn has room for all.

Let Rome be glorious on the earth,
The centre of Italian worth.

Comrades and friends! for ours is strength
Has brooked the test of woes;
O worse-scarred hearts! these wounds at length
The Gods will heal, like those.

From me you fly! Ah! let me crave,
By these poor tears, that hand you gave—
Since, parting with my woman's pride,
My madness leaves me nought beside—
By that our wedlock, by the rite
Which, but begun, could yet unite,
If e'er my kindness held you bound,
If e'er in my joy you found,
Look on this falling house, and still,
If prayer can touch you, change your will.

In vain she strives with dying hands
To wrench away the blade:
Fixed in her ribs the weapon stands,
Closed by the wound it made.
Bloodless and faint, she gasps for breath;
Her heavy eyes sink down in death;
Her cheek's bright colors fade.

Each has his destined time: a span
Is all the heritage of man:
'Tis virtue's part by deeds of praise
To lengthen fame through after days.

Snatch him, ye Gods, from mortal eyes!

I quail,
E'en now, at telling of the tale.

Each for himself, we all sustain
The durance of our ghostly pain;
Then to Elysium we repair,
The few, and breathe this blissful air.

Is there, friend,' he cries, 'a spot
That knows not Troy's unhappy lot?

A wet summer and a fine winter should be the farmer's prayer.

This to a tyrant master sold
His native land for cursed gold.

War, dreadful war, and Tiber flood
I see incarnadined with blood.