When cats run home and light is come,
And dew is cold upon the ground,
And the far-off stream is dumb,
And the whirring sail goes round,
And the whirring sail goes round;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.
Then lady Cynthia, mistress of the shade,
Goes, with the fashionable owls, to bed.
The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib.
Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.
Samuel Johnson. Parody on "Who rules o'er
freemen should himself be free," from
Henry Brooke's Earl of Essex. In Boswell's Life of Johnson. (1784)
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| page = 575
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{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem>As an ox goeth to the slaughter.
Proverbs. VII. 22. Jeremiah. XI. 19.
And the plain ox,
That harmless, honest, guileless animal,
In what has he offended? he whose toil,
Patient and ever ready, clothes the land
With all the pomp of harvest.
Thomson—The Seasons.
OYSTER
It is unseasonable and unwholesome in all
months that have not an R in their names to
eat an oyster.
Butler—Dyet's Dry Dinner. (1599)
PAIN
'Twere better to be born a stone
Of ruder shape, and feeling none,
Than with a tenderness like mine
And sensibilities so fine!
Ah, hapless wretch! condemn'd to dwell
Forever in my native shell,
Ordained to move when others please,
Not for my own content or ease;
But toss'd and buffeted about,
Now in the water and now out.
| author = Cowper
| work = The Poet, the Oyster and Sensitive
Plant.
Secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
"It's a wery remarkable circumstance, sir," said Sam, "that poverty and oysters always seem to go together."
I will not be sworn but love may transform me to an oyster; but I'll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me, he shall never make me such a fool.
An oyster may be crossed in love! Who says
A whale's a bird?—Ha! did you call my love?—
He's here! he's there! he's everywhere!
Ah me! he's nowhere!
R. B. Sheridan—The Critic. A Tragedy ReAct TIL Sc. 1.
He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.
Swift—Polite Conversation. Dialogue II.
PAIN
World's use is cold, world's love is vain,
World's cruelty is bitter bane;
But pain is not the fruit of pain.
E. B. Browning—A Vision of Poets. St. 146.
Nature knows best, and she says, roar!
Maeia Edgeworth—Ormond. Ch. V.
King Corny in a Paroxysm of the Gout.
So great was the extremity of his pain and
anguish, that he did not only sigh but roar. Matthew Henry—Commentaries. Job III. V. 24. </poem>
There is purpose in pain,
Otherwise it were devilish.
You purchase pain with all that joy can give,
And die of nothing but a rage to live.
Pain is no longer pain when it is past.
Margaret J. Preston—Old Songs and New.
Nature's Lesson.
Ah, to think how thin the veil that lies
Between the pain of hell and Paradise.
G. W. Russell—Janus.
Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain,
Which, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain.
Love's Labour's Lost. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 72.
One fire burns out another's burning,
One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish.
The scourge of life, and death's extreme disgrace,
The smoke of hell,—that monster called Paine.
There's a pang in all rejoicing,
And a joy in the heart of pain;
And the wind that saddens, the sea that gladdens,
Are singing the selfsame strain.
