=Birth.=

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The soul that rises with us our life’s star,
        Hath had elsewhere its setting,
          And cometh from afar.
178
WORDSWORTH:  Intimations of Immortality, St. 5.

While man is growing, life is in decrease;
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb. 
Our birth is nothing but our death begun.
179
YOUNG:  Night Thoughts, Night v., Line 717.

=Birthday.=

A birthday:—­and now a day that rose
With much of hope, with meaning rife—­
A thoughtful day from dawn to close: 
The middle day of human life.
180
JEAN INGELOW. A Birthday Walk.

=Bivouac.=

On Fame’s eternal camping-ground
  Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards with solemn round
  The bivouac of the dead.
181
THEODORE O’HARA:  Bivouac of the Dead.

=Blasphemy.=

Great men may jest with saints; ’tis wit in them;
But, in the less, foul profanation.
       * * * * *
That in the captain’s but a choleric word,
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.
182
SHAKS.:  M. for M., Act ii., Sc. 2.

=Bleakness.=

A naked house, a naked moor,
A shivering pool before the door,
A garden bare of flowers and fruit,
And poplars at the garden foot: 
Such is the place that I live in,
Bleak without and bare within.
183
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON:  The House Beautiful.

=Blessings.=

How blessings brighten as they take their flight! 184 YOUNG:  Night Thoughts, Night ii., Line 602.

For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds,
And though a late, a sure reward succeeds.
185
CONGREVE:  Mourning Bride, Act v., Sc. 12.

=Blindness.=

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon;
Irrecoverably dark! total eclipse,
Without all hope of day.
186
MILTON:  Samson Agonistes, Line 80.

O, loss of sight, of thee I most complain! 
Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeons, or beggary, or decrepit age! 
Light, the prime work of God, to me ’s extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annul’d, which might in part my grief have eas’d,
187
MILTON:  Samson Agonistes, Line 67.

=Bliss.=

Condition, circumstance, is not the thing;
Bliss is the same in subject or in king.
188
POPE:  Essay on Man, Epis. iv., Line 57.

Vain, very vain, my weary search to find
That bliss which only centres in the mind.
189
GOLDSMITH:  Traveller, Line 423.

=Blood.=

When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows.
190
SHAKS.:  Hamlet, Act i., Sc. 3.

A ruddy drop of manly blood
  The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
  The lover rooted stays.
191
EMERSON:  Epigraph to Friendship.