Specious

“Now let me borrow, For moments few, a temperament as stern As Pluto’s sceptre, that my words not burn These uttering lips, while I in calm speech tell How specious heaven was changed to real hell.

The queen, whom sense of honour could not move, No longer made a secret of her love, But call’d it marriage, by that specious name To veil the crime and sanctify the shame.

Thus, the greater number of a man’s errors come before him disguised under the specious form of necessity; then, after error has been committed in a moment of excitement, of delirium, or of fear, we see that we might have avoided and escaped it.

In Germany, during a given period, summed up by Schiller in his famous drama The Robbers, theft and pillage rose up in protest against property and labor, assimilated certain specious and false elementary ideas, which, though just in appearance, were absurd in reality, enveloped themselves in these ideas, disappeared within them, after a fashion, assumed an abstract name, passed into the state of theory, and in that shape circulated among the laborious, suffering, and honest masses, unknown even to the imprudent chemists who had prepared the mixture, unknown even to the masses who accepted it.

The Arabs should have done the same in their sector: but I was afraid to put everything on a throw, and designed instead the specious operation of cutting the Yarmuk Valley Railway, to throw into disorder the expected Turkish retreat.

Consulting secret with the blue-eyed maid, Still in the dome divine Ulysses stay'd: Revenge mature for act inflamed his breast; And thus the son the fervent sire address'd: "Instant convey those steely stores of war To distant rooms, disposed with secret care: The cause demanded by the suitor-train, To soothe their fears, a specious reason feign: Say, since Ulysses left his natal coast, Obscene with smoke, their beamy lustre lost, His arms deform the roof they wont adorn: From the glad walls inglorious lumber torn.

Yet many will presume: Whence heavy persecution shall arise On all who in the worship persevere Of Spirit and Truth; the rest, far greater part, Will deem in outward rites and specious forms Religion satisfied; Truth shall retire Bestuck with slanderous darts, and works of faith Rarely be found.