George Chapman (1559 – 1634)
English dramatist, translator and poet.
I am ashamed the law is such an ass.
'T is immortality to die aspiring,
As if a man were taken quick to heaven.
Let pride go afore, shame will follow after.
They 're only truly great who are truly good.
I will neither yield to the song of the siren nor the voice of the hyena, the tears of the crocodile nor the howling of the wolf.
His deeds inimitable, like the sea
That shuts still as it opes, and leaves no tracts
Nor prints of precedent for poor men's facts.
And for the authentical truth of either person or actions, who (worth the respecting) will expect it in a poem, whose subject is not truth, but things like truth? Poor envious souls they are that cavil at truth's want in these natural fictions; material instruction, elegant and sententious excitation to virtue, and deflection from her contrary, being the soul, limbs, and limits of an authentical tragedy.
Fair words never hurt the tongue.
Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea
Loves t' have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water, and her keel plows air.
Fortune, the great commandress of the world,
Hath divers ways to advance her followers:
To some she gives honour without deserving,
To other some, deserving without honour.
This was a sleight well mask'd. O, what is man,
Unless he be a Politician?
Man is a torch borne in the wind; a dream
But of a shadow, summ'd with all his substance.
I tell thee Love is Nature's second sun,
Causing a spring of virtues where he shines.
Each natural agent works but to this end,—
To render that it works on like itself.
Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.
For one heat, all know, doth drive out another,
One passion doth expel another still.
Obscuritie in affection of words and indigested concets, is pedanticall and childish.
Great Goddesse to whose throne in Cynthian fires,
This earthlie Alter endlesse fumes expires,
Therefore, in fumes of sighes and fires of griefe,
To fearefull chances thou sendst bold reliefe,
Happie, thrise happie, Type, and nurse of death,
Who breathlesse, feedes on nothing but our breath,
In whom must vertue and her issue liue,
Or dye for euer.
To put a girdle round about the world.
Virtue is not malicious; wrong done her
Is righted even when men grant they err.