“’Tis writ on Paradise’s gate,
‘Woe to the dupe that yields to Fate!’”
“The world is a bride superbly dressed;
Who weds her for dowry must pay his soul.”
“Loose the knots of the heart; never think on thy fate;
No Euclid has yet disentangled that snarl.”
“There resides in the grieving
A poison to kill;
Beware to go near them,
’Tis pestilent still.”
Harems and wine-shops only give him a new ground of observation, whence to draw sometimes a deeper moral than regulated sober life affords,—and this is foreseen:—
“I will be drunk and down with wine;
Treasures we find in a ruined house.”
Riot, he thinks, can snatch from the deeply hidden lot the veil that covers it:—
“To be wise the dull brain so earnestly throbs,
Bring bands of wine for the stupid head.”
“The Builder of heaven
Hath sundered the earth,
So that no footway
Leads out of it forth.