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The Pleasures of Hope

Part I.

At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering bills below,
Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky ?
Why do those clifts of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near ?—
'T is distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
Thus, with delight, we linger to survey
The promised joys of life's unmeasured way;
Thus, from afar, each dim-discovered scene
More pleasing seems than all the past hath been,
And every form, that Fancy can repair
From dark oblivion, glows divinely there.
What potent spirit guides the raptured eye
To pierce the shades of dim futurity ?
Can Wisdom lend, with all her heavenly power,
The pledge of Joy's anticipated hour ?

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poem by Thomas Campbell
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There was an Old Man of Aôsta,
Who possessed a large cow, but he lost her;
But they said, 'Don't you see
She has rushed up a tree?
You invidious Old Man of Aôsta!'

limerick by Edward Lear
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An army of grief

An army of grief
Knows me well
Rampage and rout
At me it spell
Musings are dead
Somberness spread
Availing loneliness
Quibbling and press
Invidious emotions
Ballistic motions

poem by Akram Saqib
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In the St. Gotthardt Pass

The storm which shook the silence of the hills
And sleeping pinnacles of ancient snow
Went muttering off in one last thunder throe
Mixed with a moan of multitudinous rills;
Yea, even as one who has wept much, but stills
The flowing tears of some convulsive woe
When a fair light of hope begins to glow
Athwart the gloom of long remembered ills:

So does the face of this scarred mountain height
Relax its stony frown, while slow uprolled
Invidious mists are changed to veiling gold.
Wild peaks still fluctuate between dark and bright,
But when the sun laughs at them, as of old,
They kiss high heaven in all embracing light.

poem by Mathilde Blind
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Her Reproach

Con the dead page as 'twere live love: press on!
Cold wisdom's words will ease thy track for thee;
Aye, go; cast off sweet ways, and leave me wan
To biting blasts that are intent on me.

But if thy object Fame's far summits be,
Whose inclines many a skeleton o'erlies
That missed both dream and substance, stop and see
How absence wears these cheeks and dims these eyes!

It surely is far sweeter and more wise
To water love, than toil to leave anon
A name whose glory-gleam will but advise
Invidious minds to quench it with their own,

And over which the kindliest will but stay
A moment, musing, "He, too, had his day!"

poem by Thomas Hardy
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Liberty, if I understand it at all, is a general principle, and the clear right of all the subjects within the realm, or of none. Partial freedom seems to me a most invidious mode of slavery. But, unfortunately, it is the kind of slavery the most easily admitted in times of civil discord; for parties are but too apt to forget their own future safety in their desire of sacrificing their enemies. People without much difficulty admit the entrance of that injustice of which they are not to be the immediate victims … great determined measures are not commonly so dangerous to freedom. They are marked with too strong lines to slide into use. … But the true danger is, when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.

quote by Edmund Burke
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Song IX. - The fatal hours are wondrous near

The fatal hours are wondrous near,
That from these fountains bear my dear;
A little space is given; in vain
She robs my sight, and shuns the plain.

A little space, for me to prove
My boundless flame, my endless love;
And, like the train of vulgar hours,
Invidious Time that space devours.

Near yonder beech is Delia's way,
On that I gaze the livelong day;
No eastern monarch's dazzling pride
Should draw my longing eyes aside.

The chief that knows of succours nigh,
And sees his mangled legions die,
Casts not a more impatient glance
To see the loitering aids advance.

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poem by William Shenstone
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Facts About Cheese

When the price of cheese was so low a few years ago that the
dairymen seriously thought of giving up the manufacture
of cheese and of selling their cows, we published the fol-
lowing lines and distributed them by the thousand :

Price soon will rise, though now 'tis low,
And brooks of milk will onward flow ;
Were it collected in one stream
There would be floods of milk and cream.

Mr. T. D. Millar has just secured, Sept., 1884, the first prize for cheese at the great
cheese fair at Amsterdam, Holland. They weighed over 600 pounds each, and were
manufactured by the Burnside Factory of Dorchester. The Galloway Factory is manufacturing
several cheese weighing one ton each. The mammoth cheese, alluded to in cheese ode,
was manufactured by Mr. James Harris, Ingersoll Factory. The Dnnn Cheese Factory, North
Oxford, secured first prize at the great Centennial Exhibition, but where all factories
produce such excellent cheese perhaps it would be making invidious distinctions to specify
the honours won by any particular factory. The West Oxford Company have recently built a
fine factory on the Culloden Road.

poem by James McIntyre
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Granny Discovers Another Tiger

That's him!! The authentic, identical beast!
The Unionist tiger, full brother to 'Sosh'!
I know by the prowl of him.
Hark to the growl of him,
While all the people ejaculate 'Gosh!
Just look at him glarin' an' starin', by thunder!
Now each for himself and the weakest goes under.'

Beware this injurious, furious brute;
He's ready to rend you with tooth and with claw.
Though 'tis incredible,
Anything edible
Disappears suddenly into his maw;
Into his cavernous inner interior
Vanishes ev'rything strictly superior.

My dears, I've autoptical, optical proof
That he's prowling and growling at large in the land.

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poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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February

Begin, my muse, the imitative lay,
Aonian doxies sound the thrumming string;
Attempt no number of the plaintive Gay,
Let me like midnight cats, or Collins sing.
If in the trammels of the doleful line
The bounding hail, or drilling rain descend;
Come, brooding Melancholy, pow'r divine,
And ev'ry unform'd mass of words amend.

Now the rough goat withdraws his curling horns,
And the cold wat'rer twirls his circling mop:
Swift sudden anguish darts thro' alt'ring corns,
And the spruce mercer trembles in his shop.

Now infant authors, madd'ning for renown,
Extend the plume, and him about the stage,
Procure a benefit, amuse the town,
And proudly glitter in a title page.

Now, wrapt in ninefold fur, his squeamish grace

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poem by Thomas Chatterton
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