Matthew Prior

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• Our hopes, like towering falcons, aim
  At objects in an airy height;
  The little pleasure of the game
  Is from afar to view the flight.
  • To the Honorable Charles Montague (1692)

• The end must justify the means.
  • Hans Carvel (1700)

• Lays the rough paths of peevish Nature even,
  And opens in each heart a little heaven.
  • Charity (1703)

• Be to her virtues very kind;
  Be to her faults a little blind;
  Let all her ways be unconfined;
  And clap your padlock — on her mind!
  • An English Padlock (1707)

• And thought the nation ne'er would thrive
  Till all the whores were burnt alive.
  • Paulo Purganti and His Wife (1708)

• He ranged his tropes, and preached up patience;
  Backed his opinion with quotations.
  • Paulo Purganti and His Wife (1708)

• Cured yesterday of my disease,
  I died last night of my physician.
  • The Remedy Worse than the Disease (1714)

• And often took leave, but was loth to depart.
  • The Thief and the Cordelier (1718)

• His noble negligences teach
  What others' toils despair to reach.
  • Alma, Canto II, l. 7 (1718)

• Till their own dreams at length decive 'em,
  And oft repeating, they believe 'em.
  • Alma, Canto III, l. 13 (1718)

• To John I owed great obligation;
  But John, unhappily, thought fit
  To publish it to all the nation:
  Sure John and I are more than quit.
  • Epigram (1718)

• Venus, take my votive glass;
  Since I am not what I was,
  What from this day I shall be,
  Venus, let me never see.
  • The Lady Who Offers Her Looking-Glass to Venus (1718)

• Nobles and heralds, by your leave,
  Here lies what once was Matthew Prior;
  The son of Adam and of Eve:
  Can Bourbon or Nassau claim higher?
  • Epitaph (1721)