Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow: Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

What woeful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me! But let a lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! how the style refines!

Sickness is a sort of early old age; it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state.

The flower's are gone when the Fruits appear to ripen.

The dull flat falsehood serves for policy, and in the cunning, truth's itself a lie.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always To be Blest.

Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; Bliss is the same in subject or in king.