“More brave than firm,and more disposed to dareAnd die at oncethan wrestle with despair...”

“They accuse me--Me--the present writer ofThe present poem--of--I know not what,--A tendency to under-rate and scoffAt human power and virtue, and all that;And this they say in language rather rough.Good God! I wonder what they would be at!I say no more than has been said in Dante'sVerse, and by Solomon and by Cervantes;By Swift, by Machiavel, by Rochefoucault;By Fenelon, by Luther and by Plato;By Tillotson, and Wesley, and Rousseau,Who knew this life was not worth a potato.'Tis not their fault, nor mine, if this be so--For my part, I pretend not to be Cato,Nor even Diogenes.--We live and die, But which is best, you know no more than I.”

“Despair and Genius are too oft connected”

“But pomp and power alone are woman's care,And where these are light Eros finds a feere;Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.”

“But suppose it past,—suppose one of these men, as I have seen them meagre with famine, sullen with despair, careless of a life which your lordships are perhaps about to value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame ; suppose this man surrounded by those children for whom he is unable to procure bread at the hazard of his existence, about to be torn for ever from a family which he lately supported in peaceful industry, and which it is not his fault than he can no longer so support; suppose this man—and there are ten thousand such from whom you may select your victims,—dragged into court to be tried for this new offence, by this new law,—still there are two things wanting to convict and condemn him, and these are, in my opinion, twelve butchers for a jury, and a Jefferies for a judge!”

“They never fail who die in a great cause.”

“The stars are forth, the moon above the topsOf the snow-shining mountains.—Beautiful!I linger yet with Nature, for the nightHath been to me a more familiar faceThan that of man; and in her starry shadeOf dim and solitary loveliness,I learn'd the language of another world.”