Laudator Temporis Acti

Excerpts from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Remorse: A Tragedy:

I.1.4-7 (Alvar):

If aught on earth demand an unmix'd feeling,
'Tis surely this—after long years of exile,
To step forth on firm land, and gazing round us,
To hail at once our country, and our birth-place.

I.1.20-24 (Zulimez):

Remorse is as the heart in which it grows:
If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews
Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy,
It is a poison-tree, that pierced to the inmost
Weeps only tears of poison!

I.1.108-109 (Alvar):

And what the mind believes impossible,
The bodily sense is slow to recognize.

I.2.322 (Alhadra):

There is no room in this heart for puling love-tales.

II.2.34-36 (Valdez):

My child, we must not give religious faith
To every voice which makes the heart a listener
To its own wish.

V.1.157-165 (Alvar):

Thou blind self-worshipper! thy pride, thy cunning,
Thy faith in universal villainy,
Thy shallow sophisms, thy pretended scorn
For all thy human brethren—out upon them!
What have they done for thee? have they given thee peace?
Cured thee of starting in thy sleep? or made
The darkness pleasant when thou wak'st at midnight?
Art happy when alone? Can'st walk by thyself
With even step and quiet cheerfulness?