I live an idle burden to the ground.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Iliad of Homer. Book xviii. Line 134.

Prayer is the burden of a sigh,

The falling of a tear,

The upward glancing of an eye

When none but God is near.

James Montgomery (1771-1854): What is Prayer?

And this the burden of his song

Forever used to be,—

I care for nobody, no, not I,

If no one cares for me.

Isaac Bickerstaff (1735-1787): Love in a Village. Act i. Sc. 2.

But touch me, and no minister so sore;

Whoe'er offends at some unlucky time

Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme,

Sacred to ridicule his whole life long,

And the sad burden of some merry song.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Satires, Epistles, and Odes of Horace. Satire i. Book ii. Line 76.

That blessed mood,

In which the burden of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

Alike all ages. Dames of ancient days

Have led their children through the mirthful maze,

And the gay grandsire, skill'd in gestic lore,

Has frisk'd beneath the burden of threescore.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): The Traveller. Line 251.

A sacred burden is this life ye bear:

Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly,

Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly.

Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin,

But onward, upward, till the goal ye win.

Wendell Phillips (1811-1884): Lines addressed to the Young Gentlemen leaving the Lenox Academy, Mass.

For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains,

And disapproves that care, though wise in show,

That with superfluous burden loads the day,

And when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.

John Milton (1608-1674): Sonnet xxi. To Cyriac Skinner.