Forgetful youth! but know, the Power above

With ease can save each object of his love;

Wide as his will extends his boundless grace.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Odyssey of Homer. Book iii. Line 285.

Nature, exerting an unwearied power,

Forms, opens, and gives scent to every flower;

Spreads the fresh verdure of the field, and leads

The dancing Naiads through the dewy meads.

William Cowper (1731-1800): Table Talk. Line 690.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd

As home his footsteps he hath turn'd

From wandering on a foreign strand?

If such there breathe, go, mark him well!

For him no minstrel raptures swell;

High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,—

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto vi. Stanza 1.

Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power,

After offence returning, to regain

Love once possess'd.

John Milton (1608-1674): Samson Agonistes. Line 1003.

Daughter of Jove, relentless power,

Thou tamer of the human breast,

Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour

The bad affright, afflict the best!

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): Hymn to Adversity.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

'T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown;

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptred sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merchant of Venice. Act iv. Sc. 1.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

'T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown;

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptred sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merchant of Venice. Act iv. Sc. 1.

Oh for a forty-parson power!

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Don Juan. Canto x. Stanza 34.

Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto ii. Stanza 2.

Not heaven itself upon the past has power;

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Imitation of Horace. Book iii. Ode 29, Line 71.

And if we do but watch the hour,

There never yet was human power

Which could evade, if unforgiven,

The patient search and vigil long

Of him who treasures up a wrong.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Mazeppa. Stanza 10.

Hail, Columbia! happy land!

Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!

Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,

Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,

And when the storm of war was gone,

Enjoyed the peace your valor won.

Let independence be our boast,

Ever mindful what it cost;

Ever grateful for the prize,

Let its altar reach the skies!

Joseph Hopkinson (1770-1842): Hail, Columbia!

The intellectual power, through words and things,

Went sounding on a dim and perilous way!

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The Excursion. Book iii.

A power is passing from the earth.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Lines on the expected Dissolution of Mr. Fox.

You shall not pile, with servile toil,

Your monuments upon my breast,

Nor yet within the common soil

Lay down the wreck of power to rest,

Where man can boast that he has trod

On him that was "the scourge of God."

Edward Everett (1794-1865): Alaric the Visigoth.

Power, like a desolating pestilence,

Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,

Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,

Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame

A mechanized automaton.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): Queen Mab. iii.

I am not now in fortune's power:

He that is down can fall no lower.

Samuel Butler (1600-1680): Hudibras. Part i. Canto iii. Line 877.

That power

Which erring men call Chance.

John Milton (1608-1674): Comus. Line 587.

Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit,

The power of beauty I remember yet.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Cymon and Iphigenia. Line 1.

Who hath not own'd, with rapture-smitten frame,

The power of grace, the magic of a name?

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844): Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 5.