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No date prefixed directs me in the starry rubric set.
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Sweetest Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen Within thy airy shell, By slow Meander's margent green, And in the violet-embroidered vale.
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Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.
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O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day!
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That old man eloquent.
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Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.
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O fleeting joys Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!
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What is strength without a double share of wisdom?
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Dim eclipse, disastrous twilight.
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Ah, why should all mankind For one man's fault, be condemned, If guiltless?
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The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.
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None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but licence.
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Blind mouths! That scarce themselves know how to holdA sheep-hook.
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And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons.
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Herbs, and other country messes,Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses.
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And now without redemption all mankind Must have been lost, adjudged to death and hell By doom severe.
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Tis chastity, my brother, chastity; She that has that is clad in complete steel, And, like a quiver'd nymph with arrows keen, May trace huge forests, and unharbour'd heaths, Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds; Where, through the sacred rays of chastity, No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaineer, Will dare to soil her virgin purity.
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It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world.
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It is Chastity, my brother. She that has that is clad in complete steel.
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But hail thou Goddess sage and holy, Hail, divinest Melancholy, Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight, And therefore to our weaker view O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue.
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The debt immense of endless gratitude, So burthensome, still paying, still to owe; Forgetful what from him I still receivd, And understood not that a grateful mind By owing owes not, but still pays, at once Indebted and dischargd; what burden then?
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Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth With such a full and unwithdrawing hand, Covering the earth with odours, fruits, flocks, Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable, But all to please and sate the curious taste?
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Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine.
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Thus I set my printless feet O'er the cowslip's velvet head, That bends not as I tread.