This could but have happened once,
  And we missed it, lost it forever.
Youth and Art.  R. BROWNING.

  He that will not when he may,
  When he will he shall have nay.
Quoted in Anatomy of Melancholy.  R. BURTON.

  He that would not when he might,
  He shall not when he wolda.
Reliques:  The Baffled Knight.  BISHOP T. PERCY.

        Urge them while their souls
  Are capable of this ambition. 
  Lest zeal, nor melted by the windy breath
  Of soft petitions, pity and remorse,
  Cool and congeal again to what it was.
King John, Act ii.  Sc. 2.  SHAKESPEARE.

  Turning, for them who pass, the common dust
  Of servile opportunity to gold.
Desultory Stanzas.  W. WORDSWORTH.

ORATORY.

  But, spite of all the criticising elves,
  Those who would make us feel—­must feel themselves.
The Rosciad.  C. CHURCHILL.

Words that weep and tears that speak. The Prophet.  A. COWLEY.

        Thence to the famous orators repair,
  Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
  Wielded at will that fierce democratie,
  Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece,
  To Macedon. and Artaxerxes’ throne.
Paradise Regained, Bk, IV.  MILTON.

  Where nature’s end of language is declined,
  And men talk only to conceal the mind.
Love of Fame, Satire II.  DR. E. YOUNG.

  What means this passionate discourse,
  This peroration with such circumstance?
Henry VI., Pt.  II.  Act i.  Sc. 1.  SHAKESPEARE.

Frank, haughty, rash,—­the Rupert of debate. The New Timon, Pt.  I.  E. BULWER-LYTTON.

  For rhetoric, he could not ope
  His mouth, but out there flew a trope.

* * * * *

  For all a rhetorician’s rules
  Teach nothing but to name his tools.
Hudibras, Pt. 1.  Canto 1.  S. BUTLER.

  “I wonder if Brougham thinks as much as he talks,”
  Said a punster, perusing a trial;
  “I vow, since his lordship was made Baron Vaux,
  He’s been Vaux et proeterea nihil!”
A Voice and Nothing More.  ANONYMOUS.

ORDER.

  Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar
  Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined;
  Till at his second bidding darkness fled. 
  Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.
Paradise Lost, Bk.  III.  MILTON.

  For the world was built in order
    And the atoms march in tune: 
  Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder,
    The sun obeys them, and the moon.
Monadnock.  R.W.  EMERSON.

  Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state,
  Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate.
Essay on Man, Epistle III.  A. POPE.