12 quotes
Lightly I sped when hope was high
And youth beguiled the chase,—
I follow, follow still: But I
Shall never see her face.
The Unrealized Ideal; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
The world's as ugly, ay, as Sin,—
And almost as delightful.
"Vanitas vanitatum" has rung in the ears
Of gentle and simple for thousands of years;
The wail still is heard, yet its notes never scare
Either simple or gentle from Vanity Fair.
A tight little bundle of wailing and flannel,
Perplex'd with the newly found fardel of life.
What an arm—what a waist
For an arm!
And this was your Cradle? Why, surely, my Jenny,
Such cozy dimensions go clearly to show
You were an exceedingly small pickaninny,
Some nineteen or twenty short summers ago.
Oh, where did hunter win
So delicate a skin
For her feet?
You lucky little kid,
You perished, so you did,
For my sweet.
Cinderella's lefts and rights
To Geraldine's were frights,
And I trow
The damsel, deftly shod,
Has dutifully trod
Until now.
The fairy stitching gleams
On the sides and in the seams,
And it shows
That Pixies were the wags
Who tipped these funny tags
And these toes.
It is an ugly world. Offend
Good people, how they wrangle,
The manners that they never mend,
The characters they mangle.
They eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod,
And go to church on Sunday—
And many are afraid of God—
And more of Mrs. Grundy.
The Jester's Plea; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
The time for Pen and Sword was when
"My ladye fayre," for pity,
Could tend her wounded knight, and then
Grow tender at his ditty.
Some ladies now make pretty songs,
And some make pretty nurses:
Some men are good for righting wrongs,
And some for writing verses.
The hair she means to have is gold,
Her eyes are blue, she's twelve weeks old,
Plump are her fists and pinky.
She fluttered down in lucky hour
From some blue deep in yon sky bower—
I call her "Little Dinky."