Careful Words

lift (n.)

lift (v.)

Take her up tenderly,

Lift her with care;

Fashioned so slenderly,

Young, and so fair!

Thomas Hood (1798-1845): The Bridge of Sighs.

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.

This child is not mine as the first was;

I cannot sing it to rest;

I cannot lift it up fatherly,

And bless it upon my breast.

Yet it lies in my little one's cradle,

And sits in my little one's chair,

And the light of the heaven she's gone to

Transfigures its golden hair.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): The Changeling.

'T is slight, not strength, that gives the greatest lift.

Thomas Middleton (1580-1627): Michaelmas Term. Act iv. Sc. 1.