Lord, what a thoughtless wretch was I, To mourn, and murmur and repine,... To see the wicked placed on high, In pride and robes of honor shine. But oh, their end, their dreadful end, Thy sanctuary taught me so, On slipp'ry rocks I see them stand, And fiery billows roll below.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When an old Woman begins to doat [sic], and grow chargeable to a Parish, she is generally turned into a Witch, and fills the whole... Country with extravagant Fancies, imaginary Distempers, and terrifying Dreams. In the mean time, the poor Wretch that is the innocent Occasion of so many Evils begins to be frighted at her self, and sometimes confesses secret Commerces and Familiarities that her Imagination forms in a delirious old Age.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belon...gs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My Mother! when I learnt that thou wast dead, Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?... Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, Wretch even then, life's journey just begun?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Obscurest night involv'd the sky, Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,... When such a destin'd wretch as I, Wash'd headlong from on board, Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, His floating home for ever left.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That loving wretch that swears 'Tis not the bodies marry, but the minds,... Which he in her angelic finds, Would swear as justly that he hears, In that day's rude hoarse minstrelsy, the spheres. Hope not for mind in women; at their best Sweetness and wit, they're but Mummy, possessed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his sta...rry track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has vowed to itself, that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, sooner than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our streets and houses,--only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compliment they can pay it, is to own it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I often used to think myself in the case of the fox-hunter, who, when he had toiled and sweated all day in the chase as if some un...heard-of blessing was to crown his success, finds at last all he has got by his labor is a stinking nauseous animal. But my condition was yet worse than his; for he leaves the loathsome wretch to be torn by his hounds, whilst I was obliged to fondle mine, and meanly pretend him to be the object of my love.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Labour and poverty, so abhorred by every one, are the certain lot of the far greater number: And those few privileged persons, who... enjoy ease and opulence, never reach contentment or true felicity. All the goods of life united would not make a very happy man: But all the ills united would make a wretch indeed; and any one of them almost (and who can be free from every one), nay often the absence of one good (and who can possess all) is sufficient to render life ineligible.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »