What wish can prosper, or what prayer,
For merchants rich in cargoes of despair,
Who drive a loathsome traffic, gauge and span
And buy the muscles and the bones of man?
The tender ties of father, husband, friend,
All bonds of nature in that moment end,
And each endures, while yet he draws his breath,
A stroke as fatal as the scythe of death.

Sleep, Repose; see Quiet and Dreams.

Cowper: Charity.

Sleep, that knits up the ravel'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.

Shakespeare: Macbeth.

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.

Scott: Lady of the Lake.

Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
He, like the world, his ready visit pays

Where fortune smiles-the wretched he forsakes.

Young: Night Thoughts.

O magic sleep! O comfortable bird

That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind

Till it is hush'd and smooth!

Keats: Endymion.

Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe;

But 'tis the happy who have called thee so.

Southey: Curse of Kehama.

Is there aught in sleep can charm the wise?
To lie in dead oblivion, losing half
The fleeting moments of too short a life;
Total extinction of th' enlighten'd soul,
Who would in such a gloomy state remain
Longer than nature craves?

Thomson: Seasons. Summer.

Rest that strengthens unto virtuous deeds,

Is one with prayer.

Bayard Taylor.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away.

Society, People; see Solitude.

Longfellow: Day is Done.

Among unequals what society

Can sort, what harmony or true delight?

Milton: Paradise Lost.

Unhappy he! who from the first of joys,
Society, cut off, is left alone

Amid this world of death.

Thomson: Seasons. Summer.

Heaven forming each on other to depend,
A master, or a servant, or a friend,

Bids each on other for assistance call,

Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.

Pope: Essay on Man.

Man in society is like a flower

Blown in its native bed; 'tis there alone
His faculties expanded in full bloom

Shine out; there only reach their proper use.

Cowper: Task.

We loathe what none are left to share-
E'en bliss 'twere woe alone to bear;
The heart once left thus desolate
Must fly at last for ease-to hate.

Byron: Giaour.

Who o'er the herd would wish to reign,
Fantastic, fickle, fierce and vain!
Vain as the leaf upon the stream,
And fickle as a changeful dream;
Fantastic as a woman's mood,
And fierce as Frenzy's fever'd blood.
Thou many-headed monster-thing,
O who would wish to be thy king!

Scott: Lady of the Lake.

Solitude, Retirement; see Society.

Wisdom's self

Oft seeks to sweet retirèd solitude;

Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,

She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort

Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd.

Milton: Comus.

Remote from man, with God he passed the days,
Prayer all his business, all his pleasure praise.
Parnell: Hermit.

The silent heart which grief assails,

Treads soft and lonesome o'er the vales,
Sees daisies open, rivers run,

And seeks, as I have vainly done,
Amusing thought; but learns to know
That solitude's the nurse of woe.

Parnell: Hymn to Contentment.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

Tell where I lie.

Pope: Ode on Solitude.

No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us,
All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.
Moore: Come o'er the Sea.

An elegant sufficiency, content,

Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books,
Ease and alternate labor, useful life,
Progressive virtue, and approving heaven!

Thomson: Seasons. Spring.

O! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought,
Lost to the noble sallies of the soul!
Who think it solitude to be alone.

Young: Night Thoughts.

O sacred solitude! divine retreat!

Choice of the prudent! envy of the great!
By thy pure stream, or in thy waving shade,
We court fair Wisdom, that celestial maid.

Young: Love of Fame.

O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more.

Cowper: Task.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Gray: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

-That inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude.

Wordsworth: I Wandered Lonely.

If from society we learn to live,

"Tis solitude should teach us how to die;

It hath no flatterers; vanity can give

No hollow aid; alone, man with his God must strive.

Byron: Childe Harold.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Byron: Childe Harold.