Edward Young (1683 – 1765)
English poet, best remembered for Night Thoughts.
Thy purpose firm is equal to the deed:
Who does the best his circumstance allows
Does well, acts nobly; angels could no more.
Virtue alone has majesty in death.
Revere thyself, and yet thyself despise.
Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew,
She sparkled, was exhal'd and went to heaven.
He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.
One to destroy, is murder by the law;
And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe;
To murder thousands takes a specious name,
War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame.
Too low they build who build beneath the stars.
A Christian is the highest style of man.
He weeps! the falling drop puts out the sun; He sighs! the sigh earth's deep foundation shakes. If in His love so terrible, what then His wrath inflamed?
Pygmies are pygmies still, though percht on Alps;
And pyramids are pyramids in vales.
Each man makes his own stature, builds himself.
Virtue alone outbuilds the Pyramids;
Her monuments shall last when Egypt’s fall.
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.
None think the great unhappy but the great.