Samuel Daniel

Samuel Daniel (1562 – October 14, 1619) was an English poet and historian.

Quotes

W. Guerney Benham, A Book of Quotations, Proverbs and Household Words (1914), pp. 104–105

And you shall find the greatest enemy
A man can have is his prosperity.
- Philotas—Tragedy. Dedication, l. 13

But years hath done this wrong,
To make me write too much, and live too long.
- Philotas—Tragedy. Dedication, l. 106

Folly in youth is sin, in age 'tis madness.
- The Tragedy of Cleopatra, Act 3, 2

For 'tis some ease our sorrows to reveal,
If they to whom we shall impart our woes,
Seem but to feel a part of what we feel,
And meet us with a sigh, but at the close.
- The Tragedy of Cleopatra, Act 4, 1

Princes in this case
Do hate the traitor, though they love the treason.
- The Tragedy of Cleopatra, Act 4, 1

The absent danger greater still appears;
Less fears he who is near the thing he fears.
- The Tragedy of Cleopatra, Act 4, 1

Pity is sworn servant unto love;
And thus be sure, wherever it begin
To make the way, it lets the master in.
- The Queen's Arcadia—Comedy. Act 3, 1

Man is a creature of a wilful head,
And hardly driven is, but eas'ly led.
- The Queen's Arcadia—Comedy. Act 4, 5

Ah! 'tis the silent rhetoric of a look,
That works the league betwixt the states of hearts.
- The Queen's Arcadia—Comedy. Act 5, 2

To spend the time luxuriously
Becomes not men of worth.
- "Ulysses and the Siren", Certain Small Poems (1605)
- Compare: Homer, Odyssey, XII, 184

Love is a sickness full of woes,
  All remedies refusing;
A plant that with most cutting grows,
  Most barren with best using.
        Why so?
More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy’d, it sighing cries—
        Heigh ho!
Love is a torment of the mind,
  A tempest everlasting;
And Jove hath made it of a kind
  Not well, nor full nor fasting.
        Why so?
More we enjoy it, &c.
- Hymen’s Triumph (1614)

Delia and The Complaint of Rosamond (1592)

Francis Turner Palgrave, The Golden Treasury (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, n.d.), p. 31

Delia. Contayning certayne Sonnets: vvith the complaint of Rosamond (London: I. C. for Simon Waterson, 1592)

Sacred on earth; designed a saint above!
- Delia, Sonnet 6

The fairest flower that ever saw the light.
Men do not weigh the stalk for what it was,
When once they find her flow’r, her glory, pass.
- Delia, Sonnet 32 (35)
- 1592 & 1594 eds.: "that" for "what"

I that have loved thee thus before thou fadest,
My faith shall wax, when thou art in thy waning.
The world shall find this miracle in me,
That fire can burn when all the matter's spent.
Thou may’st repent that thou hast scorn’d my tears,
When Winter snows upon thy sable hairs.
- Delia, Sonnet 33 (36)
- 1592 & 1594 eds.: "golden" for "sable"

For women grieve to think they must be old.
- Delia, Sonnet 42 (45)
- 1592 & 1594 eds.: "And" for "For"

And sport, sweet maid, in season of these years,
And learn to gather flowers before they wither
- Delia, Sonnet 43 (?)
- 1592 ed.: "Ah sport" for "And sport"

Care-Charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
Relieve my languish, and restore the light;
With dark forgetting of my care return.
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill adventured youth
- Delia, Sonnet 45 (49)

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born.
- Delia, Sonnet 48. See John Fletcher: "Care-charming sleep, ..."

But her will must be obeyed,
- Delia, "An Ode".
- Compare: "She Who Must Be Obeyed", H. Rider Haggard, She (1887)

Sweet, silent rhetoric of persuading eyes,
Dumb eloquence, whose power doth move the blood
More than the words or wisdom of the wise.
- Complaint of Rosamond, Stanza 19

Jewels, orators of Love.
- Complaint of Rosamond, Stanza 52

Shame leaves us by degrees.
- Complaint of Rosamond, Stanza 64

History of the Civil War (1595)

John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Minions too great argue a King too weak.
- Book i, Stanza 38

When better choices are not to be had,
We needs must take the seeming best of bad.
- Book ii, Stanza 24

Might,
That makes a title where there is no right.
- Book ii, Stanza 36

The thing possessed is not the thing it seems.
- Book ii, Stanza 104

Who reproves the lame must go upright.
- Book iii, Stanza 10

The bounds once overgone that hold men in,
They never stay; but on from bad to worse.
Wrongs do not leave off there where they begin,
But still beget new mischiefs in their course.
- Book iv, Stanza 1

He hath nothing done that doth not all.
- Book iv, Stanza 14

As that the walls worn thin, permit the mind
To look out thorough, and his frailty find. 1
- Book iv, Stanza 84.
- Compare: "The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made", Edmund Waller, Verses upon his Divine Poesy

Devotion, mother of obedience.
- Book vi, Stanza 33

The stars that have most glory have no rest.
- Book vi, Stanza 104. See Francis Bacon

Musophilus (1599)

Hiller, Geoffrey G.; Groves, Peter L., eds (1998). Samuel Daniel: Selected Poetry and a Defense of Rhyme. Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press. ISBN 978-1889818047. OCLC 39116681.

John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

O blessed letters that combine in one
All ages past, and make one live with all,
By you we do confer with who are gone,
And the dead living unto counsel call:
By you th'unborn shall have communion
Of what we feel, and what doth us befall.
- lines 181-186

Sacred religion! mother of form and fear.
- Stanza 57

And for the few that only lend their ear,
That few is all the world.
- Stanza 97

This is the thing that I was born to do.
- Stanza 100

And who (in time) knows whither we may vent
The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent
T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores?
What worlds in the yet unformed Occident
May come refin'd with th' accents that are ours?
- Stanza 163.
- Compare: "Westward the course of empire takes its way", George Berkeley, On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America

A Panegyric Congratulatory to the King's Majesty, &c. (1603)

A panegyrike congratulatorie to the Kings Maiestie Also certaine epistles, by Samuel Daniel (London: Valentine Simmes for Edward Blount, 1603)

John Morris, Selections from the Poetical Works of Samuel Daniel (Bath: Charles Clark, 1855), pp. 28-32

For ever by Adversity are wrought
The greatest Works of Admiration;
And all the Fair Examples of Renown,
Out of Distress and Misery are grown.
- "To Henry Wriothesly, Earl of Southampton"

He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And rear'd the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same;
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey?
And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil?
Where all the storms of passions mainly beat
On flesh and blood: where honour, power, renown,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;
Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet,
As frailty doth; and only great doth seem
To little minds, who do it so esteem.
- "To the Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland", Stanza 1

Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!
- "To the Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland", Stanza 12

A Defense of Rhyme

Samuel Daniel: A Defence of Ryme, 1603; Thomas Campion: Observations in the Art Of English Poesie, 1602 (E.P. Dutton and Company, 1925)

Custom, that is before all law; Nature, that is above all art.

External links

Wikipedia

Wikipedia has an article about:

Samuel Daniel

Works by Samuel Daniel at Project Gutenberg