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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=512683" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Gnothi Seauton</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">When Scaliger, whole years of labour past,<br>Beheld his lexicon complete at last<br>And weary of his task, with wond'ring eyes,<br>Saw, from words pil'd on words, a fabric rise,<br>He curs'd the industry, inertly strong,<br>In creeping toil that could persist so long;<br>And if, enrag'd he cried, heav'n meant to shed<br>Its keenest vengeance on the guilty head,<br>The drudgery of words the damn'd would know,<br>Doom'd to write lexicons in endless woe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yes, you had cause, great genius, to repent;<br>'You lost good days, that might be better spent;'<br>You well might grudge the hours of ling'ring pain,<br>And view your learned labours with disdain.<br>To you were given the large expanded mind,<br>The flame of genius, and the taste refin'd.<br>'Twas yours, on eagle wings, aloft to soar,<br>And, amidst rolling worlds, the great first cause explore,<br>To fix the aeras of recorded time,<br>And live in ev'ry age and ev'ry clime;<br>Record the chiefs, who propt their country's cause;<br>Who founded empires, and establish'd laws;<br>To learn whate'er the sage, with virtue fraught,<br>Whate'er the muse of moral wisdom taught.<br>These were your quarry; these to you were known,<br>And the world's ample volume was your own.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet, warn'd by me, ye pigmy wits, beware,<br>Nor with immortal Scaliger compare.<br>For me, though his example strike my view,<br>Oh! not for me his footsteps to pursue.<br>Whether first nature, unpropitious, cold,<br>This clay compounded in a ruder mould;<br>Or the slow current, loit'ring at my heart,<br>No gleam of wit or fancy can impart;<br>Whate'er the cause, from me no numbers flow,<br>No visions warm me, and no raptures glow.<br>A mind like Scaliger's, superior still,<br>No grief could conquer, no misfortune chill.<br>Though, for the maze of words, his native skies<br>He seem'd to quit, 'twas but again to rise;<br>To mount, once more, to the bright source of day,<br>And view the wonders of th' ethereal way.<br>The love of fame his gen'rous bosom fir'd;<br>Each science hail'd him, and each muse inspir'd.<br>For him the sons of learning trimm'd the bays,<br>And nations grew harmonious in his praise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My task perform'd, and all my labours o'er,<br>For me what lot has fortune now in store?<br>The listless will succeeds, that worst disease,<br>The rack of indolence, the sluggish ease.<br>Care grows on care, and o'er my aching brain<br>Black melancholy pours her morbid train.<br>No kind relief, no lenitive at hand,<br>I seek, at midnight clubs, the social band;<br>But midnight clubs, where wit with noise conspires,<br>Where Comus revels, and where wine inspires,<br>Delight no more: I seek my lonely bed,<br>And call on sleep to sooth my languid head.<br>But sleep from these sad lids flies far away;<br>I mourn all night, and dread the coming day.<br>Exhausted, tir'd, I throw my eyes around,<br>To find some vacant spot on classic ground;<br>And soon, vain hope! I form a grand design;<br>Languor succeeds, and all my pow'rs decline.<br>If science open not her richest vein,<br>Without materials all our toil is vain.<br>A form to rugged stone when Phidias gives--<br>Beneath his touch a new creation lives.<br>Remove his marble, and his genius dies:<br>With nature then no breathing statue vies.<br>Whate'er I plan, I feel my pow'rs confin'd<br>By fortune's frown, and penury of mind.<br>I boast no knowledge, glean'd with toil and strife,<br>That bright reward of a well acted life.<br>I view myself, while reason's feeble light<br>Shoots a pale glimmer through the gloom of night;<br>While passions, error, phantoms of the brain,<br>And vain opinions, fill the dark domain;<br>A dreary void, where fears, with grief combin'd,<br>Waste all within, and desolate the mind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What then remains? Must I, in slow decline,<br>To mute inglorious ease old age resign?<br>Or, bold ambition kindling in my breast,<br>Attempt some arduous task? Or, were it best,<br>Brooding o'er lexicons to pass the day,<br>And in that labour drudge my life away?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Samuel+Johnson">Samuel Johnson</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=512683" data-title="Gnothi Seauton de Samuel Johnson" data-description="When Scaliger, whole years of labour past,
Beheld his lexicon complete at last
And weary of his task, with wond'ring eyes,
Saw, from words pil'd on words, a fabric rise,
He curs'd the industry, inertly strong,
In creeping toil that could persist s..."></div>
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