537 quotes
What wonder if the kindly beams he shed,
Revived the drooping arts again;
If science raised her head,
And soft humanity, that from rebellion fled.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Such sullen planets at my birth did shine,
They threaten every fortune mixt with mine.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
If but a mile she travel out of town,
The planetary hour must first be known,
And lucky moment, if her eye but akes,
Or itches, its decumbiture she takes.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
And much more honest to be hired, and stand
With auctionary hammer in thy hand;
Provoking to give more, and knocking thrice
For the old household stuff, or picture’s price.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Lucan, content with praise, may lie at ease
In costly grots and marble palaces;
But to poor Bassus what avails a name,
To starve on compliments and empty fame?
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Next Petrarch follow’d, and in him we see
What rhyme, improved in all its height, can be;
At best a pleasing sound, and sweet barbarity.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through, and make a lucid interval;
But Shadwell’s genuine night admits no ray,
His rising fogs prevail upon the day.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Exalted Socrates! divinely brave!
Injured he fell, and dying he forgave;
Too noble for revenge.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Whatever truths
Redeem’d from error, or from ignorance,
Thin in their authors, like rich veins of ore,
Your works unite, and still discover more.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
But the base miser starves amidst his store,
Broods o’er his gold, and, griping still at more,
Sits sadly pining, and believes he’s poor.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball,
And now their odours arm’d against them fly:
Some preciously by shatter’d porcelain fall,
And some by aromatic splinters die.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Up, up, says Avarice! thou snor’st again,
Stretchest thy limbs, and yawn’st, but all in vain:
The tyrant Lucre no denial takes;
At his command th’ unwilling sluggard wakes.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Time has made you dote, and vainly tell
Of arms imagined in your lonely cell:
Go! be the temple and the gods your care;
Permit to men the thought of peace and war.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Were I no queen, did you my beauty weigh,
My youth in bloom, your age in its decay.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Better gleanings their worn soil can boast
Than the crab vintage of the neighb’ring coast
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
He burns the leaves, the scorching blast invades
The tender corn, and shrivels up the blades
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Did we for these barbarians plant and sow,
On these, on these our happy fields bestow?
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame
By arrogating Jonson’s hostile name;
Let father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise,
And uncle Ogleby thy envy raise.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Saint Andre’s feet ne’er kept more equal time,
Not ev’n the feet of thy own Psyche’s rhyme;
Though they in numbers as in sense excel,
So just, so like tautology, they fell.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Go, miser! go: for lucre sell thy soul;
Truck wares for wares, and trudge from pole to pole,
That men may say, when thou art dead and gone,
See what a vast estate he left his son!
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)