SPENSER.

* * * * *

  It is a work of Charity God knows,
  The reconcilement of two mortal foes.

MIDDLETON.

* * * * *

COURAGE.

  When the air is calm and still, as dead and deaf
  And under heaven quakes not an aspen leaf: 
  When seas are calm and thousand vessels fleet
  Upon the sleeping seas with passage sweet;
  And when the variant wind is still and lone
  The cunning pilot never can be known: 
  But when the cruel storm doth threat the bark
  To drown in deeps of pits infernal dark,
  While tossing tears both rudder, mast, and sail,
  While mounting, seems the azure skies to scale,
  While drives perforce upon some deadly shore,
  There is the pilot known, and not before.

T. HUDSON.

* * * * *

ENVY.

  The knotty oak and wainscot old,
  Within doth eat the silly worm: 
  Even so a mind in envy cold,
  Always within itself doth burn.

FITZ JEFFRY.

* * * * *

OPINION.

  Opinion is as various as light change,
  Now speaking courtlike, friendly, straight as strange,
  She’s any humour’s perfect parasite,
  Displeas’d with her, and pleas’d with her delight. 
  She is the echo of inconstancy,
  Soothing her no with nay, her ay with yea.

GUILPIN.

* * * * *

SLANDER.

  Happy is he that lives in such a sort
  That need not fear the tongues of false report.

EARL OF SURREY.

* * * * *

SLEEP.

  By care lay heavy Sleep the cousin of Death,
  Flat on the ground, and still as any stone;
  A very corpse, save yielding forth a breath,
  Small keep took he whom Fortune frown’d on,
  Or whom she lifted up into a throne
  Of high renown; but as a living death
  So dead alive, of life he drew the breath.

SACKVILLE.

* * * * *

WAR.

          War the mistress of enormity,
  Mother of mischief, monster of deformity,
  Laws, manners, arts, she breaks, she mars, she chases,
  Blood, tears, bowers, towers, she spills, smites, burns, and rases,
  Her brazen teeth shake all the earth asunder;
  Her mouth a fire brand, her voice is thunder;
  Her looks are lightning, every glance a flash,
  Her fingers guns, that all to powder plash,
  Fear and despair, flight and disorder, coast
  With hasty march before her murderous host,
  As burning, rape, waste, wrong, impiety,
  Rage, ruin, discord, horror, cruelty,
  Sack, sacrilege, impunity, pride. 
  Are still stern consorts by her barbarous side;
  And poverty, sorrow, and desolation,
  Follow her army’s bloody transmigration.