Joanna Baillie
Joanna Baillie
Joanna Bailliewas a Scottish poet and dramatist. Baillie was very well known during her lifetime and, though a woman, intended her plays not for the closet but for the stage. Admired both for her literary powers and her sweetness of disposition, she hosted a literary society in her cottage at Hampstead. Baillie died at the age of 88, her faculties remaining unimpaired to the last...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionPoet
art night tongue
O mysterious Night! thou art not silent; many tongues halt thou.
lying fire frozen
I can bear scorpion's stings, tread fields of fire, in frozen gulfs of cold eternal lie, be tossed aloft through tracts of endless void, but cannot live in shame.
hem earth speech
Stand there, damn'd meddling villain, and be silent; For if thou utt'rest but a single word, A cough or hem, to cross me in my speech, I'll send thy cursed spirit from the earth, To bellow with the damn'd!
time wings bears
Time never bears such moments on his wing as when he flies too swiftly to be marked.
war rights iron
War is honorable In those who do their native rights maintain; In those whose swords an iron barrier are Between the lawless spoiler and the weak; But is, in those who draw th' offensive blade For added power or gain, sordid and despicable As meanest office of the worldly churl.
law care
Me care for te laws when te laws care for me.
pride men self
Pride is a fault that great men blush not to own: it is the ennobled offspring of self-love; though, it must be confessed, grave and pompous vanity, Iike a fat plebeian in a rove of office, does very often assume its name.
men young old-man
It is so seldom that a young fellow has any inclination for the company of an old man. . .
mother sweet heart
There is a sight all hearts beguiling-- A youthful mother to her infant smiling, Who with spread arms and dancing feet, A cooing voice, returns its answer sweet.
mind want bears
The mind doth shape itself to its own wants, and can bear all things.
eye ambition mountain
I am as one Who doth attempt some lofty mountain's height, And having gained what to the upcast eye The summit's point appear'd, astonished sees Its cloudy top, majestic and enlarged, Towering aloft, as distant as before.
soul favors rooms
Tis ever thus when favours are denied; All had been granted but the thing we beg: And still some great unlikely substitute-- Your life, your soul, your all of earthly good-- Is proffer'd, in the room of one small boon.
dark mind looks
It ever is the marked propensity of restless and aspiring minds to look into the stretch of dark futurity.
cases
The plainest case in many words entangling.