N.
Name.
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
1242
SHAKS.: Rom. and Jul., Act ii., Sc. 2.
Who hath not owned, with rapture-smitten frame,
The power of grace, the magic of a name?
1243
CAMPBELL: Pl. of Hope, Pt. ii., Line 5.
Nature.
Nature ever yields reward
To him who seeks, and loves her best.
1 244
BARRY CORNWALL: Above and Below.
O Nature, how fair is thy face,
And how light is thy heart, and how friendless thy grace!
1245
OWEN MEREDITH: Lucile, Pt. i., Canto v., St. 28.
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware.
1246
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT: Thanatopsis.
News—Newspapers.
The first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office; and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,
Remember'd knolling a departing friend.
1247
SHAKS.: 2 Henry IV., Act i., Sc. 1.
Evil news rides post, while good news baits.
1248
MILTON: Samson Agonistes, Line 1538.
Turn to the press—its teeming sheets survey,
Big with the wonders of each passing day;
Births, deaths, and weddings, forgeries, fires, and wrecks,
Harangues and hailstones, brawls and broken necks.
1249
SPRAGUE: Curiosity.
Newton.
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
1250
POPE: Epitaph intended for Sir Isaac Newton.
Newton (that proverb of the mind), alas!
Declared, with all his grand discoveries recent,
That he himself felt only "like a youth
Picking up shells by the great ocean—Truth."
1251
BYRON: Don Juan, Canto vii., St. 5.
New Year.
The wave is breaking on the shore,—
The echo fading from the chime—
Again the shadow moveth o'er
The dial-plate of time!
1252
WHITTIER: The New Year.
Niagara.
Flow on for ever in thy glorious robe
Of terror and of beauty;... God hath set
His rainbow on thy forehead; and the cloud
Mantles around thy feet.
1253
MRS. SIGOURNEY: Niagara.
Night.
Dark night, that from the eye his function takes,
The ear more quick of apprehension makes.
1254
SHAKS.: Mid. N. Dream, Act iii., Sc. 2.
Now began
Night with her sullen wing to double-shade
The desert; fowls in their clay nests were couch'd,
And now wild beasts came forth, the woods to roam.
1255
MILTON: Par. Regained, Bk. i., Line 409.
Awful Night!
Ancestral mystery of mysteries.
1256
GEORGE ELIOT: Spanish Gypsy, Bk. iv.
Night, night it is, night upon the palms.
Night, night it is, the land wind has blown.
Starry, starry night, over deep and height;
Love, love in the valley, love all alone.
1257
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: The Feast of Famine.
Night is the time to weep,
To wet with unseen tears
Those graves of memory where sleep
The joys of other years.
1258
JAMES MONTGOMERY: The Issues of Life and Death.
Nightingale.
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.
How many things by season season'd are
To their right praise, and true perfection!
1259
SHAKS.: M. of Venice, Act v., Sc. 1.
O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still,
Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill.
1260
MILTON: Sonnet 1.
Nobility.
Noble by birth, yet nobler by great deeds.
1261
LONGFELLOW: Tales of a Wayside Inn. Emma and Eginhard.
For he who is honest is noble,
Whatever his fortunes or birth.
1262
ALICE CARY: Nobility.
North.
Ask where's the north? at York, 't is on the Tweed;
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where.
1263
POPE: Essay on Man, Epis. ii., Line 222.
November.
Next was November; he full gross and fat
As fed with lard, and that right well might seem;
For he had been a-fatting hogs of late,
That yet his brows with sweat did reek and steam.
1264
SPENSER: Faerie Queene, Bk. vii., Canto vii., St. 40.
In rattling showers dark November's rain,
From every stormy cloud, descends amain.
1265
RUSKIN: The Months.
Numbers.
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.
1266
POPE: Prologue to the Satires, Line 127.