What is this?
Your knees to me? to your corrected son?
Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach
Fillop the stars: then let the mutinous winds
Strike the proud cedars ’gainst the fiery sun:
Murd’ring impossibility, to make
What cannot be, slight work.
Coriolanus, act 5. sc. 3.
Cæsar.———— Danger knows full well,
That Cæsar is more dangerous than he.
We were two lions litter’d in one day,
And I the elder and more terrible.
Julius Cæsar, act 2. sc. 4.
Almahide. This day——
I gave my faith to him, he his to me.
Almanzor. Good Heav’n, thy book of fate before me lay
But to tear out the journal of this day.
Or if the order of the world below,}
Will not the gap of one whole day allow,}
Give me that minute when she made that vow.}
That minute ev’n the happy from their bliss might give,
And those who live in grief a shorter time would live.
So small a link if broke, th’ eternal chain
Would like divided waters join again.
Conquest of Granada, act 3.
Almanzor.—— I’ll hold it fast
As life; and when life’s gone, I’ll hold this last.
And if thou tak’st it after I am slain,
I’ll send my ghost to fetch it back again.
Conquest of Granada, part 2. act 3.
Lynairaxa. A crown is come, and will not fate allow.
And yet I feel something like death is near.
My guards, my guards——
Let not that ugly skeleton appear.
Sure Destiny mistakes; this death’s not mine;
She doats, and meant to cut another line.
Tell her I am a queen—— but ’tis too late;
Dying, I charge rebellion on my fate;
Bow down, ye slaves——
Bow quickly down and your submission show;
I’m pleas’d to taste an empire ere I go. [Dies.
Conquest of Granada, part 2. act. 5.
Ventidius. But you, ere love misled your wand’ring eyes,
Were, sure, the chief and best of human race,
Fram’d in the very pride and boast of nature,
So perfect, that the gods who form’d you wonder’d
At their own skill, and cry’d, A lucky hit
Has mended our design.
Dryden, All for Love, act 1.
Not to talk of the impiety of this sentiment, it is ludicrous instead of being lofty.
The famous Epitaph on Raphael is not less absurd than any of the foregoing passages:
Raphael, timuit, quo sospite, vinci
Rerum magna parens, et moriente mori.