Coy Nature, (which remain'd, thô aged grown,
A beauteous Virgin still, injoy'd by none,
Nor seen unveil'd by any one,)
When Harvey's violent passion she did see,
Began to tremble and to flee,
Took Sanctuary, like Daphne, in a Tree:
There Daphne's Lover stopt, and thought it much
The very Leaves of her to touch:
But Harvey, our Apollo, stopt not so,
Into the Bark and Root he after he did go:
No smallest Fibres of a Plant,
For which the Eye-beams point doth sharpness want,
His passage after her withstood;

Mark how the lark and linnet sing;
With rival notes
They strain their warbling throats,
To welcome in the spring.
But in the close of night,
When Philomel begins her heav'nly lay,
They cease their mutual spite,
Drink in her music with delight,
And list'ning and silent, and silent and list'ning,
and list'ning and silent obey.

If an audience could be arranged
and also my safe return
this is what I'd tell the Sultan
This is what he'd learn:
O Sultan, my master, if my clothes
are ripped and torn
it is because your dogs with claws
are allowed to tear me.
And your informers every day are those
who dog my heels, each step
unavoidable as fate.
They interrogate my wife, at length,
and list each friend's name.
Your soldiers kick and beat me,
force me to eat from my shoes,
because I dare approach these walls
for an audience with you

The hours of sleepy night decay apace,
And now warm beds are fitter than this place.
All time is long that is unwilling spent,
But hours are minutes when they yield content.
The gathered flowers we love that breathe sweet scent,
But leave them, their sweet odour being spent.
It is a life is never ill,
To lie and sleep in roses still.

The rarer pleasure is, it is more sweet,
And friends are kindest when they seldom meet.
Who would not hear the nightingale still sing,
Or who grew ever weary of the spring?

For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years,
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had but begun his "Characters of Men."
Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past.

“O Caesar, we who are about to die
Salute you!” was the gladiators' cry
In the arena, standing face to face
With death and with the Roman populace.

O ye familiar scenes,—ye groves of pine,
That once were mine and are no longer mine,—
Thou river, widening through the meadows green
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,—
Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose
Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose
And vanished,—we who are about to die,
Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky,
And the Imperial Sun that scatters down

He preaches to the crowd that power is lent,
But not conveyed, to kingly government;
That claims successive bear no binding force;
That Coronation Oaths are things of course;
Maintains the multitude can never err,
And sets the people in the papal chair.
The reason's obvious: interest never lies;
The most have still their interest in their eyes;
The power is always theirs, and power is ever wise.
Almighty crowd, thou shorten'st all dispute;
Power is thy Essence; Wit thy Attribute!
Nor Faith nor Reason make thee at a stay,

What time soft night had silently begun
To steal by minutes on the long-lived days,
The furious dog-star, following the bright sun,
With noisome heat infests his cheerful rays,
Filling the earth with many a sad disease;
Which then inflamed with their intemperate fires,
Herself in light habiliments attires.

And the rathe morning, newly but awake,
Was with fresh beauty burnishing her brows,
Herself beholding in the general lake,
To which she pays her never ceasing vows.
With the new day me willingly to rouse,

When I did part, my Soule did part from mee,
And tooke his farewell of thy beauteous Eyne;
But now that I (returned) doo thee see,
He is returnd, and lives through kindnes thine,
And of thee looketh for a welcome home.
I then not anie more to sorrow need,
Now I am come: and if before alone
On shadow then, on substance now I feed.
So, if my parting bitter was and sad,
Sweete's my returne to thee, and passing glad.