AMBITION.
A high look, and a proud heart, and the ploughing of the wicked is sin.—Proverbs, xxi. 4.
Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.—Obadiah, 4.
Woe unto you Pharisees, for ye love the uppermost seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets.—Luke, xi. 43.
Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy,
Court favour, yet untaken, I besiege;
Ambition’s ill-judged efforts to be rich.
Alas! Ambition makes my little, less;
Embittering the possessed: why wish for more?
Wishing, of all employments, is the worst.
Young.
Woe to thee, wild Ambition! I employ
Despair’s low notes thy dread effects to tell;
Born in high heaven, her peace thou could’st destroy;
And but for thee, there had not been a hell.
Through the celestial domes thy clarion pealed;
Angels, entranced, beneath thy banners ranged,
And straight were fiends; hurled from the shrinking field,
They waked in agony to wail the change.
Darting through all her veins the subtle fire,
The world’s fair mistress first inhaled thy breath;
To lot of higher beings learned to aspire;
Dared to attempt, and doomed the world to death.
Maria A. Brooks.
The sons of earth
Who, vexed with vain disquietude, pursue
Ambition’s fatuous light through miry pools,
That yawn for their destruction, stray, foredoomed,
Amid delusive shadows to their end.
William Herbert.
Ambition, when the pinnacle is gained
With many a toilsome step, the power it sought
Wants to support itself, and sighs to find
The envied height but aggravates the fall.
George Bally.