English poet and essayist (1743-1825)
A thousand pleasant arts we'll have
To add new feathers to the wings of Time,
And make him smoothly haste away:
We'll use him as our slave,
And when we please we'll bid him stay,
And clip his wings, and make him stop to view
Our studies, and our follies too.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"To Mr. Barbauld"
What hand unseen
Impells me onward through the glowing orbs
Of habitable nature, far remote,
To the dread confines of eternal night,
To solitudes of vast unpeopled space,
To deserts of creation, wide and wild;
Where embryo systems and unkindled suns
Sleep in the womb of chaos?
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"A Summer Evening's Meditation"
Eternity.--Thy name
Or glad, or fearful, we pronounce, as thoughts
Wandering in darkness shape thee. Thou strange being,
Which art and must be, yet which contradict'st
All sense, all reasoning,--thou, who never wast
Less than thyself, and who still art thyself
Entire, though the deep draught which Time has taken
Equals thy present store--No line can reach
To thy unfathomed depths. The reasoning sage
Who can dissect a sunbeam, count the stars,
And measure distant worlds, is here a child,
And, humbled, drops his calculating pen.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"Eternity"
But now my soul, unused to stretch her powers
In flight so daring, drops her weary wing,
And seeks again the known accustomed spot,
Drest up with sun, and shade, and lawns, and streams,
A mansion fair, and spacious for its guest,
And full replete with wonders.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"A Summer Evening's Meditation"
I would not be understood to inveigh against wealth, or against the enjoyments of it; they are real enjoyments, and allied to many elegancies in manners and in taste ; — I only wish to prevent unprofitable pains and inconsistent expectations.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
Let parents, therefore, not scruple to use the power God and Nature have put into their hands for the advantage of their offspring. Let them not fear to impress them with prejudices for whatever is fair and honorable in action — whatever is useful and important in systematic truth. Let such prejudices be wrought into the very texture of the soul.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
There is a land, where the roses are without thorns, where the flowers are not mixed with brambles. In that land, there is eternal spring, and light without any cloud. The tree of life groweth in the midst thereof; rivers of pleasures are there, and flowers that never fade. Myriads of happy spirits are there, and surround the throne of God with a perpetual hymn. The angels with their golden harps sing praises continually, and the cherubim fly on wings of fire! This country is Heaven: it is the country of those that are good; and nothing that is wicked must inhabit there.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
Let me here,
Content and grateful, wait the appointed time,
And ripen for the skies: the hour will come
When all these splendours bursting on my sight
Shall stand unveiled, and to my ravished sense
Unlock the glories of the world unknown.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"A Summer Evening's Meditation"
The world has little to bestow
Where two fond hearts in equal love are joined.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Delia
O thou mighty mind! whose powerful word
Said, thus let all things be, and thus they were!
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"A Summer Evening's Meditation"
Come, clear thy studious looks awhile,
'Tis arrant treason now
To wear that moping brow,
When I, thy empress, bid thee smile.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"To Mr. Barbauld"
Another morning soon shall rise,
Another day salute our eyes,
As smiling and as fair as she,
And make as many promises;
But do not thou
The tale believe,
They're sisters all,
And all deceive.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"The Promise of the Dawn"
But the most common and one of the worst instruments of torture was a small machine armed with fishbone and ribs of steel, wide at top but extremely small at bottom. In this detestable invention the queen orders the bodies of her female subjects to be enclosed: it is then, by means of silk cords, drawn closer and closer at intervals, till the unhappy victim can scarcely breathe; and they have found the exact point that can be borne without fainting, which, however, not unfrequently happens. The flesh is often excoriated, and the very ribs bent, by this cruel process. Yet what astonished me more than all the rest, these sufferings are borne with a degree of fortitude which, in a better cause, would immortalize a hero or canonize a saint. The Spartan who suffered the fox to eat into his vitals, did not bear pain with greater resolution: and as the Spartan mothers brought their children to be scourged at the altar of Diana, so do the mothers here bring their children,—and chiefly those whose tender sex one would suppose excused them from such exertions,— and early inure them to this cruel discipline. But neither Spartan, nor Dervise, nor Bonze, nor Carthusian monk, ever exercised more unrelenting severities over their bodies, than these young zealots : indeed the first lesson they are taught, is a surrender of their own inclinations and an implicit obedience to the commands of the goddess.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
The duties of friendship are, first, sincere and disinterested affection. This seems self-evident: and yet there are many who pretend to love their friends, when at the same time they only take delight in them, as we delight in a fine voice or a good picture. If you love your friend, you will love him when his powers of pleasing and entertaining you have given way to malady or depression of spirits; you will study his interest and satisfaction, you will be ready to resign his company, to promote his advantageous settlement at a distant residence, to favor his connection with other friends; — these are the tests of true affection : without such a disposition, you may enjoy your friend, but you do not love him.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
Life! we have been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;-
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not Good-night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good-morning!
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"Life! I Know Not What Thou Art"
Society than solitude is worse
And man to man is still the greatest curse.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Ovid to His Wife
A thousand pretty ways we'll find
To mock old Winter's starving reign;
We'll bid the violets spring again,
Bid rich poetic roses blow,
Peeping agove his heaps of snow;
We'll dress his withered cheeks in flowers,
And on his smooth bald head
Fantastic garlands bind.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"To Mr. Barbauld"
Is knowledge the pearl of price? That, too, may be purchased -- by steady application, and long solitary hours of study and reflection. Bestow these, and you shall be wise.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
We are often hurt by a brutality and sluggish conceptions of the vulgar; not considering that some there must be, to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, and that cultivated genius, or even any great refinement and delicacy in their moral feelings, would be a real misfortune to them.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
What is a man's country? To the unlettered peasant who has never left his native village, that village is his country, and consequently all of it he can love. The man who mixes in the world, and has a large acquaintance with the characters existing along with himself upon the stage of it, has a wider range. His idea of a country extends to its civil polity, its military triumphs, the eloquence of its courts, and the splendor of its capital. All the great and good characters he is acquainted with swell his idea of its importance, and endear to him the society of which he is a member.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays