J. T. Fields, Yesterdays with Authors.
ITH all his conscience and one eye askew,
So false, he partly took himself for true;
Whose pious talk, when most his heart was dry,
Made wet the crafty crowsfoot round his eye;
Who, never naming God except for gain,
So never took that useful name in vain;
Made Him his catspaw and the Cross his tool,
And Christ the bait to trap his dupe and fool;
Nor deeds of gift, but deeds of grace he forged,
And snake-like slimed his victim ere he gorged;
And oft at Bible meetings, o'er the rest
Arising, did his holy oily best,
Dropping the too rough H in Hell and Heaven,
To spread the Word by which himself had thriven.
Alfred Tennyson, Sea Dreams.
LEASE the eyes and the ears, they will introduce you to the heart, and, nine times in ten, the heart governs the understanding.
Lord Chesterfield, Letters to his Son.
HE cup with trembling hands he grasps,
Close to his thirsty lips he clasps,
Ringed with its pewter rim—he gasps.
The eddying floor beneath him crawls,
He clutches at the flying walls,
Then like a lump of lead he falls.