Pompous

“ Even Lord Pompous hailed the change with delight, since his sovereign, occupied constantly in the enjoyment of his newly recovered happiness, omitted the practical jokes upon his lord chamberlain with which he had frequently been wont to solace his idle hours. And during the long years that followed before Fridolin's reign and life ended, the king constantly called to mind the thrilling scenes of interest which I have recounted, and invariably spoke with the greatest thankfulness of the happy thought which came into his head upon that memorable day when he first projected the pig-race. ”

“ We have learned, indeed, partly from reading poetry, and partly from reading vicious compositions, to endure, and too often to admire, such stiff and laboured discourses in writing; but if it were even possible for a man to speak in the same pompous diction in which Browne has written his vulgar errors, he would certainly be very disagreeable. ”

“ In like fashion, the average person grins or guffaws at sight of a stranger in an outlandish costume, although, as a matter of fact, the dress may be in every respect superior to his own. Simply, its oddity somehow tickles the risibilities. Such surprise is occasioned by contrasting circumstances. When a pompous gentleman, marching magnificently, suddenly steps on a banana peel, pirouettes, somersaults, and sits with extreme violence, we laugh before asking if he broke a leg. ”

“ The glare of pomp and pleasure is analogous to the motion of the blood; it absorbs all their affection and attention, they are torn from it as from the only good in this world, and return to their home as to a place of exile and condemnation. ”

“ I think that the pomp itself, the lord and the lackeys, the fine house, and all her state struck as it were cold at my heart, dooming to failure the mad appeal which they could not smother. But there was more; for all these might have been, and yet not reached or infected her soul. But when I spoke to her in words that had for me a sweetness so potent as to win me from all hesitation and make as nothing the whole world beside, she did not understand. ”

“ Upon one such little step in the great staircase of human life how vast a sum of human happiness or misery depends! I thought of myself, then of Pompey, and then of the mysterious and inexplicable destiny which surrounded us. I thought of Pompey!—alas, I thought of love! ”

“ Stealing, rising, swelling, gathering, as it thrilled the ear, all the delights of harmony in a grand minor cadence that told of deliverance from bondage and homage to God for his wonderful aid, sweeping the awed heart with an ecstasy that was almost pain; breathing, hovering, soaring, they held the vast multitude in speechless wonder. ”

“ Still slowly pass'd the melancholy day,
And still the stranger wist not where to stray,—
The world was sad! — the garden was a wild!—
And Man, the hermit, sigh'd—till Woman smil'd!
True! the sad power to generous hearts may bring
Delirious anguish on his fiery wing!
Barr'd from delight by Fate's untimely hand,
By wealthless lot, or pitiless command;
Or doom''d to gaze on beauties that adorn
The smile of triumph or the frown of scorn ”

“ Thy wit and humour claim the passing sigh:
When, thro’ the hour, with unresisted skill,
I’ve seen thee mould each feature to thy will,—
When friends drew round thee with attentive ear,
Pleas’d with the raill’ry which they could not fear.
Oh! how I’ve heard thee, with concealing art,
Join in the song, tho’ sorrow rent thy heart;
How have I seen thee too, with venial guile,
O’er many an anguish force the faithless smile,—
Seen suffering Nature check each sigh, each fear,
To rob maternal fondness of a tear! ”

“ Is bitterness and sorrow in its sum so small and scant a thing? Do we here breathe so divine an air that we should fear to face the passage of our breath? What have we here but hope and memory? What see we here but shadows? ”

“ Had you to weep because the being whom you had learned to worship had with wanton frolic and a mocking smile plucked out your heart-strings and left you forlorn and desolate, a prey to ignominy and to lifelong regret? And had you to weep tears of bitter humiliation in the knowledge that those who hated and despised you were laughing their fill at your folly? Oh! I, too, Mademoiselle Fernande, was young then ... ”

“ Thus comes the blush of love, the inspiration of song, and acting, the fire and energy of speech and oratory, the flames of lust and passion, the brutal vigor of the athlete and pugilist, the blaze of anger, and the sudden and awful courage and ferocity of those who, at other times, are poltroons and errant cowards. ”

“ A strange, low, moaning sound rose from behind him, fluttering, inarticulate, that voiceless utterance that seeks to find some vent for human emotion when human emotion sweeps with mighty surge to engulf the soul. ”

“ Passion flickered, waned, and, on a pause of doubt and misgiving, tenderness dawned—tenderness, pity, remorse, regret, a growing horror and anguish, a growing knowledge of Heaven forfeited, of Hell made sure, a crescent terror, and dismay unspeakable, and under it all tenderness deepening, deepening, deepening, like a flood pressing against a barrier that it must at last break down. ”

“ The coming and going of phantom forms, the tramping of many feet, a great marching to and fro, the sound of laughter and the noise of weeping, a mixing and mingling of gaiety and grief, of poverty and pomp, of sunshine and shadow, of life and death. But everywhere things seem topsy turvy. ”

“ Did passion warp my heart and head To madness? And, if so, Can madness palliate bloodshed?— It may be—I shall know When God shall gather up the dead From where the four winds blow. We met at sunset, he and I— My second comrade true; Two cups with wine were brimming high, And one was drugg'd—we knew Not which, nor sought we to descry; Our choice by lot we drew. ”

“ The Frowns of Princes, and the Envy of those that Judge by Hearsay, or Appearance; without either Reason or Truth! To say nothing of the Innumerable Temptations, Vices, and Excesses, of a Life of Pomp, and Pleasure. Let a man but set the Pleasing of his Palate against the Surfeits of Gluttony and Excess, The Starving of his Mind against a Pamper'd Carcass ”

“ They are weeping, we are sure,
At the litanies of human groans ascending
From the crushed hearts of the poor.
III.
When the human rests in love upon the human,
All grief is light;
But who bends one kind glance to illumine
Our life-long night?
The air around is ringing with their laughter—
God has only made the rich to smile;
But we—in our rags, and want, and woe—we follow after,
Weeping the while.
IV.
And the laughter seems but uttered to deride us. ”

“ To solemn and eternal things We dedicate her lips sublime!— As hourly, calmly, on she swings Fanned by the fleeting wings of time!— No pulse—no heart—no feeling hers! She lends the warning voice to fate ”

“ I ask, "Holds earth or sin, or woe?"
My heart replies, "I do not know."
Nay! all we know, or feel, my heart,
Today is joy undimmed, complete;
In tears or pain we have no part;
The act of breathing is so sweet,
We care no higher joy to name. ”

“ I heard a sound like the rustling of a wind through trees, and I felt the shock of an unknown emotion made up of fear and of enthusiasm, as though she had been not a woman but only a voice crying strange, unknown words in inspiring tones, promising and cruel, without any passion of love or hate. ”

“ Standing there in the full glare of the gas that shone down on his innocent, boyish face, he seemed to be singing from very love of it, so simply and easily, as if the truth and dignified beauty of the words were filling his soul and insisting on utterance. “In the days of thy youth, when the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh.” ”

“ Where'er the power of Ridicule displays
Her quaint-eyed visage, some incongruous form,
Some stubborn dissonance of things combined,
Strikes on her quick perception: whether Pomp,
Or Praise, or Beauty be dragg'd in and shewn
Where sordid fashions, where ignoble deeds,
Where foul Deformity is wont to dwell;
Or whether these with shrewd and wayward spite 520
Invade resplendent Pomp's imperious mien,
The charms of Beauty, or the boast of Praise.
Ask we for what fair end the Almighty Sire
In mortal bosoms stirs this gay contempt,
These grateful pangs of laughter ”

“ A nauseous stench its filthy shape exhales, And through its heaving bosom you may mark The constant preying of a quenchless flame That gnaws its heartstrings! while a harsh quick moan Of mingled wrath, and madness, and despair, Perpetually issues from its lips;— And with unequal but unceasing steps, It chases through the hot, sulphureous gloom, A mocking phantom,—fair as it is foul! ”

“ Soul, mind and body leaped into fiery passion—she was his, and his she always would be—those eyes, those lips, the white throat, those perfect arms to cling about his neck—and all of heaven and hell and earth were naught beside her. ”

“ The mad smouldering lust which gives a sort of under-song of surging passion to the sophisticated sensuality of "Salome" is as much an evocation of Nature as the sad sweet wisdom of that sentence in "De Profundis"—"Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow." ”

“ By all our joys and griefs unmoved—
To think with soften'd breast and weep!
Oh! well such moments can repay,
For lingering hours of darker thought,
When hope has bent ‘neath sorrow's sway,
And feeling is with anguish fraught. ”

“ God have mercy on the boy who learns to sob early! Condemn it as sentiment, if you will; talk as you will of the fearlessness, and strength of the boy’s heart—yet there belong to many, tenderly strung chords of affection which give forth low and gentle music that consoles and ripens the ear for all the harmonies of life. ”

“ In the various strophes conflicting sentiments arise, develop, and reach a climax, only to be overthrown by a sudden revulsion of feeling; fame, happiness, the sweetness of love beckon the poet on; then comes the chilling thought of death to show that all things earthly are nothing but vanity. ”

“ Short and unstable are the joys of man!—How often does it happen that such ardent scenes of pleasure as we have been just endeavouring to describe are but like the gleam which precedes the storm—a prelude to direful woe! Oft has the tender parent or loving child, who but yesterday animated such a scene of festivity, to-day exhibited the most desponding spectacle which human nature can witness. ”

“ I guess that I'm done for, old chappie!
Done, whether she loves me or not,—
But don't look so deuced unhappy,—
Y'know it was I fired the shot.
Thanks, awfully. Give me the whiskey,—
There's a horrible pain in my head;
It's queer that my nerves should be frisky
When my heart is as heavy as lead.
I'm worthless; I own it! ”

“ The passing shadow, or the gleam of sunshine, the half-expressed sneer, or the tempests of angry passion, the words of love and flattery, or the cruel insinuations of envy and jealousy, may pale your cheek, or call into it a deeper flush; may kindle your eye with indignation, or melt its rays in sorrow ”

“ How many very wantonly pleasant sports spring from the most decent and modest language of the works on love? Pleasure itself seeks to be heightened with pain; it is much sweeter when it smarts and has the skin rippled. The courtesan Flora said she never lay with Pompey but that she made him wear the prints of her teeth.— [Plutarch, Life of Pompey, c. i.] ”

“ The vilest appetites, and the most remorseless inconstancy towards their objects, acquired the title of the heart—the irresistible feelings—the too tender sensibility: and if the frosts of prudence, the icy chains of human law, thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of human nature, who could help it? ”

“ These sudden alternatives of joy and sadness, divine transports and grand melancholies, exquisite tenderness and womanly depressions, depict the poet, extreme in emotions, ceaselessly troubled with grief or merriment, feeling the slightest shock, more strong, more dainty in enjoyment and suffering than other men, capable of more intense and sweeter dreams, within whom is stirred an imaginary world of graceful or terrible beings, all impassioned like their author. ”

“ Therefore the dusky, golden softness of this man’s sensuous flame of life, that flowed oft his flesh like the flame from a candle, not baffled and gripped into incandescence by thought and spirit as her life was, seemed to her something wonderful, beyond her. ”

“ How we laugh and cry, become indignant, revengeful, our feelings leaping from one extreme to the other, according to the passion-freighted or love-freighted words which reach our ear; how we sit spell-bound, with bated breath, before the great orator who is playing upon the emotions of his audience, as a musician plays upon the strings of his harp, now bringing out tears, now smiles, now pathos, now indignation! ”

“ With the warm and passionate temperaments, enthusiasm had reached to frenzy, while, with the cold and passionless, it smouldered, a hidden fire, ready to burst out into lurid flame upon the first occasion of excitement. ”

“ Instead of bowing humbly and openly to the god of enthusiasm, of unreasoned lilt of sentiment and passion, and of the intense delight in all that lives and throbs and vibrates with pleasure and joy; they affect to suppress sentiments, to rein in all pleasures, and to cast a slur on joy. ”

“ Emotion excited by some unexpected word, by a letter that is delivered to us, occasions the most extraordinary revolutions in our frame, accelerates the circulation, causes the heart to palpitate, the tongue to refuse its office, and has been known to occasion death by extreme anguish or extreme joy. ”

“ The face is pallid with sorrow; the large, dark, liquid eyes are full of mournful light; the voice pierces to the heart in its tones of supplication, and vibrates with a nameless thrill of despairing agony. ”