SOLITUDE-see Retirement. Retreat, Society.

Solitude sometimes is best society,

And short retirement urges sweet return. Milton, P.L.1x.476. Wisdom's self

Oft seek to sweet retired solitude;

Where, with her best nurse, contemplation,

She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,

That in the various bustle of resort

Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd.

The silent heart which grief assails,
Treads soft and lonesome o'er the vales,
Sees daisies open, rivers run,

And seeks (as I have vainly done)
Amusing thought; but learns to know
That solitude's the nurse of woe.

Milton, Comus, 375.

Parnell, Hymn to Contentm.

Bear me, some God! oh, quickly bear me hence
To wholesome solitude, the nurse of sense
Where contemplation prunes her ruffled wings,
And the free soul looks down to pity kings.

Pope, Sat. of Dr. Donne versified, 1v. 184.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

Pope, Ode on Solitude.

Young. N. T. 11. 6.

O! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought,
Lost to the noble sallies of the soul!
Who think it solitude to be alone.
The man how bless'd, who sick of gaudy scenes,
(Scenes apt to thrust between us and ourselves),
Is led by choice to take his fav'rite walk
Beneath death's gloomy, silent, cypress shades,
Unpierc'd by vanity's fantastic ray;

To read his monuments, to weigh his dust,

Visit his vaults, and dwell among the tombs. Young, N.T.v.303. Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow. Goldsmith, Traveller,1.

O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,

Some boundless contiguity of shade,

Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more.

Cowper, Task, 11. 1.

SOLITUDE-continued.

For solitude, however some may rave,
Seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave-
A sepulchre in which the living lie,

Where all good qualities grow sick and die.

I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd-
How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!

But grant me still a friend in my retreat,

Whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet. Cowper, Ret. 735.

The man to solitude accustom'd long,

Perceives in everything that lives a tongue;
Not animals alone, but shrubs and trees

Have speech for him, and understood with ease,
After long drought when rains abundant fall,
He hears the herbs and flowers rejoicing all.

Oh solitude! where are thy charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.

Cowper, Needless Alarm.

Cowper, Alex. Selkirk, L

And here no more shall human voice
Be heard to rage-regret-rejoice-
The last sad note that swell'd the gale
Was woman's wildest funeral wail.

Byron, Giaour.

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen;
With the wild flock that never needs a fold:

Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.

Byron, Ch. H. 11. 25.

But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,

To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,

And roam along, the world's tired denizen,

With none who bless us, none whom we can bless:
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less,
Of all that flatter'd, follow'd, sought and sued;

This is to be alone; this, this is solitude! Byron, Ch. H. 11. 26.

Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them?

Is not the love of these deep in my heart
With a pure passion ? should I not contemn
All objects, if compared with these ? and stem
A tide of suffering, rather than forego

Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm
Of those whose eyes are only turn'd below,

Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow.
Byron, Ch. H. шï. 75.

If from society we learn to live,

'Tis solitude should teach us how to die;

It hath no flatterers; vanity can give

No hollow aid; alone, man with his God must strive, Ib. IV.34.

Oh! that the desert were my dwelling-place,

With one fair spirit for my minister,

That I might all forget the human race,

And, hating no one, love but only her! Byron, Ch. H. iv. 177.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;

I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before.
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Ib. Ch. H..IV. 178.

Perhaps there's nothing-I'll not say appals,
But saddens, more by night as well as day,
Than an enormous room without a soul

To break the lifeless splendour of the whole. Ib. D. J. v. 56.
To view alone

The fairest scenes of land and deep,

With none to listen and reply

To thoughts with which my heart beat high

Were irksome-for whate'er my mood,

In sooth I love not solitude. Byron, Bride of Abydos, 1. 3.

No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us,

All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.

Moore, Come O'er the Sea.

No, 'tis not here that solitude is known.
Through the wide world he only is alone
Who lives not for another.

Rogers, Human Life.

SOLITUDE SOPHISTRY.

SOLITUDE-continued.

583

Why should we faint and fear to live alone,
Since all alone, so Heaven has will'd, we die,
Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own,
Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh.
Keble, Christian Year. 24th Sunday after Trin.
Cease, triflers;
would you
have me feel remorse
Leave me alone-nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeons,
Speak to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

SONNET.

If when I look on thee and hear thy voice,
In a low whisper'd melody, alone;
When it is breathing in its softest tone,
All the deep feelings of my heart rejoice;
Oh! what were it to sit beside thee long,

Maturin, Bertram.

And gaze on thy bright looks and thy dark eyes,
And hear thy tender words and thy sweet song,
As sweet as if it floated from the skies!

O! what were it to know that thou art mine,
Indissolubly mine! that thou wilt be
For ever as an angel unto me,

Whether the day be dark or future shine,
Giving me, in the bliss of loving thee,
A portion of the bliss they call divine!

SONS-see Father, Parents.

O wonderful son, that can so astonish
A mother!

MS.

Sh. Ham. III. 2.

Few sons attain the praise

Of their great sires, and most their sires disgrace.

Pope, Odyssey, II. 315.

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;

Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so. Pope, E. C. 438.

SOPHISTRY-see Philosophy.

Gay, Fable 14, part 2.

Dogmatic jargon learnt by heart,
Trite sentences, hard terms of art,
To vulgar ears seems so profound,
They fancy learning in the sound.
As creeping ivy clings to wood or stone,
And hides the ruin that it feeds upon,
So sophistry cleaves close to and protects
Sin's rotten trunk, concealing its defects.

Cowper, Progress of Error, 285.

SORROW-sce Grief, Distress, Mischief, Misfortune, Mourning.
Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak,
Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break.
Sh. Macb. IV. 3.

Here I and sorrow sit:

Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it. Sh. K.John, III.1.

Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,
Makes the night morning, and the noon-tide night.

Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp'd,
Doth burn the heart to cinders.

Sh. Ric. III. I. 4.

Sh. Tit. And. II. 5.

One sorrow never comes, but brings an heir,
That may succeed as his inheritor.

One fire burns out another's burning;
One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish;

Sh. Peric. 1. 4.

Turn giddy, and be help'd by backward turning;

One desp'rate grief cures with another's languish:
Take thou some new infection to the eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.

I have that within which passeth show;

Sh. Rom. 1. 2.

These, but the trappings and the suits of woe. Sh. Ham. 1.2.
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions.

One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
So fast they follow.

Sh. Ham. IV. 5.

Sh. Ham. IV. 7.

He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears
But the free comfort which from thence he hears;
But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow,

That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow. Sh. Oth. 1. 3.
Past sorrows, let us mod'rately lament them,
For those to come, seek wisely to prevent them.

Webster, Duchess of Malfy.

Alas! I have no words to tell my grief;
To vent my sorrow would be some relief;
Light sufferings give us leisure to complain;
We groan, but cannot speak, in greater pain.

Dryden, Palamon and Arcite.

The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown;
No traveller ever reach'd that blest abode,
Who found not thorns and briars in his road.

Cowper.