William Davenant Quotes (12 Quotes)

Aubade THE lark now leaves his wat'ry nest, And climbing shakes his dewy wings. He takes this window for the East, And to implore your light he sings Awake, awake the morn will never rise Till she can dress her beauty at your eyes. The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, The ploughman from the sun his season takes, But still the lover wonders what they are Who look for day before his mistress wakes. Awake, awake break thro' your veils of lawn Then draw your curtains, and begin the dawn.

I shall ask leave to desist, when I am interrupted by so great an experiment as dying.

All jealousy must be strangled in its birth, or time will soon make it strong enough to overcome the truth.

Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.

For angling-rod he took a sturdy oake For line, a cable that in storm neer broke His hooke was such as heads the end of pole To pluck down house ere fire consumes it whole The hook was baited with a dragons tale, And then on rock he stood to bob for whale.

Praise and Prayer PRAISE is devotion fit for mighty minds, The diff'ring world's agreeing sacrifice Where Heaven divided faiths united finds But Prayer in various discord upward flies. For Prayer the ocean is where diversely Men steer their course, each to a sev'ral coast Where all our interests so discordant be That half beg winds by which the rest are lost. By Penitence when we ourselves forsake, 'Tis but in wise design on piteous Heaven In Praise we nobly give what God may take, And are, without a beggar's blush, forgiven.

It is the wit and policy of sin to hate those we have abused.

Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.

For I must go where lazy Peace Will hide her drowsy head And, for the sport of kings, increase The number of the dead.

The assembled souls of all that men held wise.

How much pleasure they lose (and even the pleasures of heroic poesy are not unprofitable) who take away the liberty of a poet, and fetter his feet in the shackles of a historian.

Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.