With an auspicious and a dropping eye,

With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,

In equal scale weighing delight and dole.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 2.

Who hath not proved how feebly words essay

To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray?

Who doth not feel, until his failing sight

Faints into dimness with its own delight,

His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess

The might, the majesty of loveliness?

Lord Byron 1788-1824: The Bride of Abydos. Canto i. Stanza 6.

To business that we love we rise betime,

And go to 't with delight.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Antony and Cleopatra. Act iv. Sc. 4.

In this fool's paradise he drank delight.

George Crabbe (1754-1832): The Borough. Letter xii. Players.

Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,

Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!—

The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs

Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Personal Talk. Stanza 4.

A sight to delight in.

Robert Southey (1774-1843): The Cataract of Lodore.

The labour we delight in physics pain.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act ii. Sc. 3.

If there's delight in love, 't is when I see

That heart which others bleed for, bleed for me.

William Congreve (1670-1729): The Way of the World. Act iii. Sc. 12.

In ev'ry sorrowing soul I pour'd delight,

And poverty stood smiling in my sight.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Odyssey of Homer. Book xvii. Line 505.

A verse may find him who a sermon flies,

And turn delight into a sacrifice.

George Herbert (1593-1632): The Church Porch.

There is a land of pure delight,

Where saints immortal reign;

Infinite day excludes the night,

And pleasures banish pain.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748): Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Book ii. Hymn 66.

Yes, social friend, I love thee well,

In learned doctors' spite;

Thy clouds all other clouds dispel,

And lap me in delight.

Charles Sprague (1791-1875): To my Cigar.

Tho' lost to sight, to mem'ry dear

Thou ever wilt remain;

One only hope my heart can cheer,—

The hope to meet again.

Oh fondly on the past I dwell,

And oft recall those hours

When, wand'ring down the shady dell,

We gathered the wild-flowers.

Yes, life then seem'd one pure delight,

Tho' now each spot looks drear;

Yet tho' thy smile be lost to sight,

To mem'ry thou art dear.

Oft in the tranquil hour of night,

When stars illume the sky,

I gaze upon each orb of light,

And wish that thou wert by.

I think upon that happy time,

That time so fondly lov'd,

When last we heard the sweet bells chime,

As thro' the fields we rov'd.

Yes, life then seem'd one pure delight,

Tho' now each spot looks drear;

Yet tho' thy smile be lost to sight,

To mem'ry thou art dear.

George Linley (1798-1865): Song.

As high as we have mounted in delight,

In our dejection do we sink as low.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Resolution and Independence. Stanza 4.

My latest found,

Heaven's last, best gift, my ever new delight!

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book v. Line 18.

As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore.

Or if I would delight my private hours

With music or with poem, where so soon

As in our native language can I find

That solace?

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Regained. Book iv. Line 330.

Oh, when a mother meets on high

The babe she lost in infancy,

Hath she not then for pains and fears,

The day of woe, the watchful night,

For all her sorrow, all her tears,

An over-payment of delight?

Robert Southey (1774-1843): The Curse of Kehama. Canto x. Stanza 11.

When daisies pied and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver-white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Love's Labour's Lost. Act v. Sc. 2.

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,

Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw;

Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,

A little louder, but as empty quite;

Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,

And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age.

Pleased with this bauble still, as that before,

Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle ii. Line 274.

Angels listen when she speaks:

She's my delight, all mankind's wonder;

But my jealous heart would break

Should we live one day asunder.

Earl Of Rochester (1647-1680): Song.

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 twilights too her dusky hair,

But all things else about her drawn

From May-time and the cheerful dawn.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): She was a Phantom of Delight.

Soul of the age,

The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage,

My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by

Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie

A little further, to make thee a room.

Ben Jonson (1573-1637): To the Memory of Shakespeare.

Oh that it were my chief delight

To do the things I ought!

Then let me try with all my might

To mind what I am taught.

Jane Taylor (1783-1824): For a Very Little Child.

O, I have passed a miserable night,

So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,

That, as I am a Christian faithful man,

I would not spend another such a night,

Though 't were to buy a world of happy days.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Richard III. Act i. Sc. 4.

What more felicitie can fall to creature

Than to enjoy delight with libertie,

And to be lord of all the workes of Nature,

To raine in th' aire from earth to highest skie,

To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): Muiopotmos: or, The Fate of the Butterflie. Line 209.