Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
Be large in mirth; anon we'll drink a measure
The table round.
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,
And let my liver rather heat with wine
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
As merry as the day is long.
You have a merry heart.
Yea, my lord; I thank it, poor fool, it keeps
on the windy side of care.
Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you; for out of question, you were born in a merry hour.
No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that I was born.
I am not merry; but I do beguile
The thing I am by seeming otherwise.
And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
When every room
Hath blaz'd with lights and brayed with minstrelsy.
Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a:
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.
And let's be red with mirth.
The glad circle round them yield their souls
To festive mirth, and wit that knows no gall.
'Tis merry in hall
Where beards wag all.
MIDGE
Meanwhile, there is dancing in yonder green bower,
A swarm of young midges, they dance high and low;
'Tis a sweet little species that lives but one hour,
And the eldest was born half an hour ago.
The midge's wing beats to and fro
A thousand times ere one can utter "O."
MIDNIGHT
Is there not
A tongue in every star that talks with man,
And wooes him to be wise? nor wooes in vain;
This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
That hour o' night's black arch the keystane.
It was evening here,
But upon earth the very noon of night.
I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose over the city,
Behind the dark church tower.
Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!
The frontier town and citadel of night!
O wild and wondrous midnight,
There is a might in thee
To make the charmed body
Almost like spirit be,
And give it some faint glimpses
Of immortality!
’Tis midnight now. The bent and broken moon,
Batter'd and black, as from a thousand battles,
Hangs silent on the purple walls of Heaven.
Soon as midnight brought on the dusky hour
Friendliest to sleep and silence.
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve;
Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.
Midnight, yet not a nose
From Tower Hill to Piccadilly snored!
Midnight, and yet no eye
Through all the Imperial City closed in sleep.
