Life and Literature Part 103

1419

Is there a heart that music cannot melt?

Alas! how is that rugged heart forlorn.

--_Beattie._

1420

Music loosens a heart that care has bound.

1421

No music is so charming to my ear as the requests of my friends, and the supplications of those in want of my a.s.sistance.

--_Caesar._

1422

His very foot has music in't, As he comes up the stair.

--_Burns._

N

1423

For art may err, but nature cannot miss.

--_J. Dryden._

1424

Our nature exists by motion; perfect rest is death.

1425

Good-nature, like a bee, collects honey from every herb. Ill-nature, like a spider, sucks poison from the sweetest flower.

1426

Good-nature is the beauty of the mind, and, like personal beauty, wins almost without anything else.

--_Hanway._

1427

If you want to keep your good looks, keep your good nature.

1428

NATURE.

No ordinance of man shall override The settled laws of nature and of G.o.d; Not written these in pages of a book, Nor were they framed to-day, nor yesterday; We know not whence they are; but this we know, That they from all eternity have been, And shall to all eternity endure.

--_Sophocles, born 495 B. C._

1429

Every one follows the inclinations of his own nature.

--_Propertius._

1430

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely sh.o.r.e, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the universe, and feel What I am can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

--_Lord Byron._

1431

Who can paint Like nature? Can imagination boast, Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?

--_J. Thomson._

1432

Tender handed stroke a nettle And it stings you for your pains; Grasp it like a man of mettle, And it soft as silk remains; Thus it is with vulgar natures, Use them kindly, they rebel: But be rough as nutmeg graters, And the rogues obey you well.

--_Aaron Hill._

1433