Charles Lamb

Who first invented work, and bound the free And holiday-rejoicing spirit down . . . . To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? . . . . Sabbathless Satan!

Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.

I like you and your book, ingenious Hone! In whose capacious all-embracing leaves The very marrow of tradition 's shown; And all that history, much that fiction weaves.

A garden was the primitive prison, till man, with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it.

What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old sundials! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horologue of the first world. Adam could scare have missed it in Paradise.

My only books Were woman's looks,- And folly 's all they 've taught me.

I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed.

Oh for a tongue to curse the slave Whose treason, like a deadly blight, Comes o'er the councils of the brave, And blasts them in their hour of might!

When true hearts lie wither'd And fond ones are flown, Oh, who would inhabit This bleak world alone?

No, the heart that has truly lov'd never forgets; But as truly loves on to the close; As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets; The same look which she turn'd when he rose.