Date: October 13, 1759

"My heart, a victim to thine eyes, / Should I at once deliver, / Say, would the angry fair one prize / The gift, who slights the giver?"

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: October, 1759

"Of beasts, it is confessed, the ape / Comes nearest us in human shape; / Like man he imitates each fashion, / And malice is his ruling passion; / But both in malice and grimaces / A courtier any ape surpasses"

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: May 13, 1761

"In all my Enna's beauties blest, / Amidst profusion still I pine; / For though she gives me up her breast, / Its panting tenant is not mine."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"All evils here contaminate the mind, / That opulence departed leaves behind."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"Each nobler aim, repressed by long control, / Now sinks at last or feebly mans the soul; / While low delights, succeeding fast behind, / In happier meanness occupy the mind: / As in those domes, where Caesars once bore sway, / Defaced by time and tottering in decay, / There in the ruin, heedless...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state / With daring aims irregularly great."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"Thus every good his native wilds impart / Imprints the patriot passion on his heart, / And even those ills, that round his mansion rise, / Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

Whence from such lands each pleasing science flies, / That first excites desire and then supplies; / Unknown to them, when sensual pleasures cloy, / To fill the languid pause with finer joy; / Unknown those powers that raise the soul to flame, / Catch every nerve and vibrate through the frame."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"In wild excess the vulgar breast takes fire, / Till, buried in debauch, the bliss expire."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"But while this softer art their bliss supplies, / It gives their follies also room to rise; / For praise too dearly loved or warmly sought / Enfeebles all internal strength of thought; / And the weak soul, within itself unblest, / Leans for all pleasure on another's breast."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)