English poet (1683-1765)
On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows,
In every rill a sweet instruction flows.
EDWARD YOUNG
Love of Fame
This vast and solid earth, that blazing sun,
Those skies, thro' which it rolls, must all have end.
What then is man? The smallest part of nothing.
EDWARD YOUNG
The Revenge
How blessings brighten as they take their flight!
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Pride, like hooded hawks, in darkness soars
From blindness bold, and towering to the skies.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
The blood will follow where the knife is driven,
The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.
EDWARD YOUNG
The Revenge
What is a miracle?--'Tis a reproach,
'Tis an implicit satire on mankind;
And while it satisfies, it censures too.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Who combats with a brother, wounds himself.
EDWARD YOUNG
The Brothers
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful, is man!...
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Old men love novelties; the last arriv'd
Still pleases best; the youngest steals their smiles.
EDWARD YOUNG
The Brothers
Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote,
And think they grow immortal as they quote.
EDWARD YOUNG
Love of Fame: The Universal Passion in Seven Characteristical Satires
Day buries day; month, month; and year the year:
Our life is but a chain of many deaths.
EDWARD YOUNG
The Revenge
Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
O let me be undone the common way,
And have the common comfort to be pity'd,
And not be ruin'd in the mask of bliss,
And so be envy'd, and be wretched too!
EDWARD YOUNG
The Revenge
Youth is not rich in time; it may be poor;
Part with it as with money, sparing; pay
No moment but in purchase of its worth,
And what it's worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
EDWARD YOUNG
The Complaint, or Night-Thoughts on Life, Death & Immortality
Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain, It, makes us wander, wander earth around, To fly that tyrant Thought. As Atlas groan'd The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality
Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts;
Inters celestial hopes without one sigh.
Prisoner of earth, and pent beneath the moon,
Here pinions all his wishes.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden scepter o'er a slumbering world.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
The course of Nature is the art of God.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Will toys amuse, when med'cines cannot cure?
When spirits ebb, when life's enchanting scenes
Their lustre lose, and lessen in our sight,
As lands and cities, with their glittering spires,
To the poor shatter'd bark by sudden storm
Thrown off to sea, and soon to perish there?
Will toys amuse? No: thrones will then be toys,
And earth and skies seem dust upon the scale.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
In an active life is sown the seed of wisdom; but he who reflects not, never reaps.
EDWARD YOUNG
The Centaur Not Fabulous