Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words--health, peace, and competence.
_Essay on Man, Epistle IV_. A. POPE.

POET, THE.

We call those poets who are first to mark
Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn,--
Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark,
While others only note that day is gone.
_Shakespeare_. O.W. HOLMES.

Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong,
And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song.
_Epistle to G.F. Mathews_. J. KEATS.

Most joyful let the poet be;
It is through him that all men see.
_The Poet of the Old and New Times_. W.E. CHANNING.

God's prophets of the beautiful.
_Vision of Poets_. E.B. BROWNING.

For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.
_Of Poets and Poesy: (Christopher Marlowe)_. M. DRAYTON.

But he, the bard of every age and clime,
Of genius fruitful, and of soul sublime,
Who, from the glowing mint of fancy, pours
No spurious metal, fused from common ores,
But gold, to matchless purity refin'd,
And stamp'd with all the godhead in his mind.
_Juvenal_. W. GIFFORD.

Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
_Julian and Maddalo_. P.B. SHELLEY.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:

There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
_The Garden (Translated)_. A. MARVELL.

In his own verse the poet still we find.
In his own page his memory lives enshrined.
As in their amber sweets the smothered bees,--
As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze,
Lies self-embalmed amidst the mouldering trees.
_Bryant's Seventieth Birthday_. O.W. HOLMES.

There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.
_The Timepiece: The Task, Bk. II_. W. COWPER.

While pensive poets painful vigils keep,
Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep.
_The Dunciad_. A. POPE.

Deem not the framing of a deathless lay
The pastime of a drowsy summer day.
But gather all thy powers,
And wreak them on the verse that thou wouldst weave.
_The Poet_. W.C. BRYANT.

From his chaste Muse employed her heaven-taught lyre
None but th