And know, I have not yet the leisure to be good.—Oldham.


Thou tamer of the human breast,

Whose iron scourge and torturing hour

The bad affright, afflict the best.—Gray: Ode to Adversity.

When the scourge

Inexorably, and the torturing hour,

Calls us to penance.—Milton: Paradise Lost.


Lo, where the rosy-bosomed hours,