Edward Young (1683 – 1765)
English poet, best remembered for Night Thoughts.
Souls made of fire, and children of the sun,
With whom revenge is virtue.
A God all mercy is a God unjust.
Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden scepter o'er a slumbering world.
The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.
Be wise today; 'tis madness to defer.
Man wants little, nor that little long.
While man is growing, life is in decrease;
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
Our birth is nothing but our death begun.
Procrastination is the thief of time.
There buds the promise of celestial worth.
We see time’s furrows on another’s brow,
And death intrench’d, preparing his assault;
How few themselves in that just mirror see!
With skill she vibrates her eternal tongue,
Forever most divinely in the wrong.
A soul without reflection, like a pile
Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.
How commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the sun.
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave;
Legions of angels can't confine me there.
They that on glorious ancestors enlarge,
Produce their debt instead of their discharge.
A friend is worth all hazards we can run.
The course of Nature is the art of God.
In records that defy the tooth of time.
Unlearned men of books assume the care,
As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair.
Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.