WOMAN (continued).

There's in you all that we believe of heaven;
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,

Eternal joy, and everlasting love.

In infancy, a tender flower,
Cultivate her!

A floating bark, in girlhood's hour,
Softly freight her!

When woman grown, a fruitful vine,

Tend and press her!

A sacred charge, in life's decline,

OTWAY.

Shield and bless her!-W. T. MONCRIEFF.

She was a phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight;

A lovely apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament.

Her

eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn!
A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

WORDSWORTH.

O woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade

By the light quivering aspen made,—
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!

SCOTT.

Formed in benevolence of nature,
Obliging, modest, gay, and mild,
Woman's the same endearing creature,
In courtly town and savage wild.

MRS. BARBAULD.

WOMAN (continued).

Follow a shadow, it still flies you;
Seem to fly it, it will pursue:
So court a mistress, she denies you;
Let her alone, she will court you.
Say, are not women truly, then,
Styled but the shadows of us men ?

BEN JONSON.

WORDS.

Words are like leaves, and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.-POPE.

Words are but pictures of our thoughts.-DRYDEN.

His words, replete with guile,

Into her heart too easy entrance won.-MILTON.

Teach me, some power, that happy art of speech,
To dress my purpose up in gracious words;
Such as may softly steal upon her soul,

And never waken the tempestuous passions.—Rowe.

You have, by Fortune and his highness' favours, Gone slightly o'er low steps, and now are mounted Where retainers; powers are your and your words, Domestics to you, serve your will, as 't please Yourself pronounce their office.-SHAKSPEARE.

A

CONCISE DICTIONARY

OF

PROPER RHYMES.

OBSERVATIONS AND INSTRUCTIONS.

DICTIONARY of Rhymes should never be consulted by an author unless he finds himself at an absolute standstill for a rhyme; to habituate himself to writing with it under his eye would give a stiffness to his composition which it is desirable that poetry should not possess. It is in comic and satirical verse, where a greater number of words are available, that it will be found to be the most useful, as a new or unthought of rhyme will frequently suggest a new idea.

All rhymes proceed from the vowels A, E, I, O, U, and may be obtained by running over in the mind the words in which they are the dominant. Thus, to find "PERSUADE," and the words that rhyme with it, take “ ADE," and then run through "ade" with the consonant that precedes it,

as,

Bade-which suggests "forbade."
Cade.

Dade-which you reject, being no word.
Eade-which you reject.

Fade.

Lade-which suggests "blade," "slayed."
Made which suggests "maid."
Nade-which suggests “neighed.”
Oade-which you reject.
Pade-which suggests "paid."
Qade which you reject.
Rade-which suggests

"betrayed."

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raid," trade," "degrade,"

Sade-which suggests "said."

Tade-which suggests "rodomontade.”
Uade-which you reject.

Vade-which suggests "pervade," "invade," &c.
Wade-which suggests "weighed."

If neither of the rhymes in "ade" suit, in the like way run through" aid," which will give you the words, as suggested” above.

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In consulting the dictionary for a rhyme, consider, in the like way, the vowel that precedes the last consonant of the word, and, if the word end in two or more consonants, then begin with the vowel that immediately précedes the first of them. For example, LAND: N is the first of the final consonants, a the vowel that precedes it. Turn to AND, and you will find band, grand, stand, &c.

Many words ending in ty, my, ate, ance, ence, ness, &c., which have not their accent on the last syllable, are used indiscriminately by our best poets to rhyme with the simple sounds sigh, fate, chance, sense, bless, &c.; this, however, can only be regarded as a sacrifice of sound to sense. The words are given in the following pages, but such deviations from strict rule should be indulged in as sparingly as possible.

For such words as ought not to form terminals, as well as to remarks on the formation of double and treble rhymes, the reader is referred to the chapter on Rhymes at the beginning of the Handbook.