William Rounseville Alger

With strength and patience all his grievous loads are borne, And from the world's rose-bed he only asks a thorn.

An Arab, by his earnest gaze, Has clothed a lovely maid with blushes; A smile within his eyelids plays And into words his longing gushes.

A thousand years a poor man watched Before the gate of Paradise: But while one little nap he snatched, It oped and shut. Ah! was he wise?

A gray eye is a sly eye, And roguish is a brown one; Turn full upon me thy eye,— Ah, how its wavelets drown one! A blue eye is a true eye; Mysterious is a dark one,

In the nine heavens are eight Paradises; Where is the ninth one? In the human breast. Only the blessed dwell in th' Paradises, But blessedness dwells in the human breast.

As two floating planks meet and part on the sea, O friend! so I met and then drifted from thee.

Ten poor men sleep in peace on one straw heap, as Saadi sings, But the immensest empire is too narrow for two kings.

The moon is a silver pin-head vast, That holds the heaven's tent-hangings fast.

Beware the deadly fumes of that insane elation Which rises from the cup of mad impiety, And go, get drunk with that divine intoxication Which is more sober far than all sobriety.

Fill up the goblet and reach to me some! Drinking makes wise, but dry fasting makes glum.

God's mills grind slow, But they grind woe.

In the rest of Nirvana all sorrows surcease: Only Buddha can guide to that city of Peace Whose inhabitants have the eternal release.

To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius, a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which first created it.

Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason.

When man seized the loadstone of science, the loadstar of superstition vanished in the clouds.

Most men give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.