He, whose desires are still abroad, I see
Hath never any peace at home the while;
And therefore now come back my heart to me.
It is but for superfluous things we toil.
Rest alone with thyself, be all within;
For what without thou gett'st, thou dost not win.
Honour, wealth, glory, fame are no such things
But that which from imagination springs.
High-reaching power, that seems to overgrow,
Doth creep but on the earth, lies base and low.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Monday, March 10, 2014
Rest Alone with Thyself
John Danyel, Songs for the Lute Viol and Voice (1606), no. iii, in English Madrigal Verse 1588-1632, ed. E.H. Fellowes, 2nd ed. (1929; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), p. 402: