Edward Young (1683 – 1765)
English poet, best remembered for Night Thoughts.
None think the great unhappy but the great.
All men think all men mortal but themselves.
Ambition! powerful source of good and ill!
Time elaborately thrown away.
To waft a feather or to drown a fly.
To frown at pleasure, and to smile in pain.
The house of laughter makes a house of woe.
Man makes a death which Nature never made.
A man of pleasure is a man of pains.
There is something in Poetry beyond Prose-reason; there are Mysteries in it not to be explained, but admired.
Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.
Where Nature’s end of language is declin’d,
And men talk only to conceal the mind.
By night an atheist half believes a God.
The booby father craves a booby son,
And by Heaven’s blessing thinks himself undone.
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain;
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn.
Heaven’s Sovereign saves all beings but himself
That hideous sight,—a naked human heart.
Creation sleeps! 'Tis as the general pulse
Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme,
Nor take her tea without a strategem.
The spirit walks of every day deceased.
'T is elder Scripture, writ by God's own hand,—
Scripture authentic! uncorrupt by man.