VIOLENCE.

Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders.—Isaiah, lx. 18.

Thus saith the Lord, do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow.—Jeremiah, xxii. 3.

And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, and what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man.—Luke, iii. 14.

All the elements

At least had gone to wreck, disturbed and torn

With violence of this conflict, had not soon

Th’ Eternal hung his golden scales.

Milton.

Grieved at heart, when looking down He saw

The whole earth filled with violence; and all flesh

Corrupting each their way.

Milton.

The grief of mind is that intestine war

That stirs sedition in the state of man;

Where, when our passions once commanding are,

Our peaceful days are desperate, for then

The stir’s more hot than when it first began;

For heady passion ’s like an untamed beast,

That riots most when we desire it least.

This violence exceeds his virtuous mien,

Like swelling tides that overcome their shore,

Leaving the awful current of their stream,

And break their banks that bounded them before;

Yet grief in his great violence is more;

For if that reason bound not grief with laws,

In our destruction grief will be the cause.

Christopher Lever.

First Envy, eldest born of hell, imbrued

Her hands in blood, and taught the sons of men

To make a death which Nature never made,

And God abhorred; with violence rude to break

The thread of life ere half its length was run,

And rob a wretched brother of his being.

Bishop Porteus.