John Ford (dramatist) (1586 – 1640)
One of the last English playwrights in the great Jacobean school that produced Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Jonson.
Tempt not the stars, young man, thou canst not play
With the severity of fate.
Glories
Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams,
And shadows soon decaying.
Sister, look ye,
How, by a new creation of my tailor's
I've shook off old mortality.
Green indiscretion, flattery of greatness,
Rawness of judgement, wilfulness in folly,
Thoughts vagrant as the wind, and as uncertain.
Why, I hold fate
Clasped in my fist, and could command the course
Of time's eternal motion, hadst thou been
One thought more steady than an ebbing sea.
Brother, even by my mother's dust, I charge you,
Do not betray me to your mirth or hate.
Revenge proves its own executioner.
Philosophers dwell in the moon.
Melancholy
Is not, as you conceive, indisposition
Of body, but the mind's disease.
Fly hence, shadows, that do keep,
Watchful sorrows, charmed in sleep.
There's not a hair
Sticks on my head but, like a leaden plummet,
It sinks me to the grave: I must creep thither;
The journey is not long.