537 quotes
When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin,
As thou whose Eth’ ridge dost transfuse to thine?
But so transfused as oil and waters flow:
His always floats above, thine sinks below.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
But when the western winds with vital pow’r
Call forth the tender grass and budding flow’r,
Men, at the last, produce in open air
Both flocks, and send them to their summer’s fare.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Thou hop’st with sacrifice of oxen slain
To compass wealth, and bribe the god of gain
To give thee flocks and herds, with large increase;
Fool! to expect them from a bullock’s grease.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Give me, ye gods, the product of one field,
That so I neither may be rich nor poor;
And haying just enough, not covet more.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
I saw th’ angelic guards from earth ascend,
Grieved they must now no longer man attend;
The beams about their temples dimly shone;
One would have thought the crime had been their own.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
I beg the grace
You would lay by those terrors of your face;
Till calmness to your eyes you first restore,
I am afraid, and I can beg no more.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Firm Doric pillars found the solid base,
The fair Corinthian crown the higher space,
And all below is strength, and all above is grace.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
The whole division that to Mars pertains,
All trades of death that deal in steel for gains,
Were there; the butcher, armorer, and smith,
Who forges sharpen’d fauchions, or the scythe.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
If I by chance succeed
In what I write, and that’s a chance indeed,
Know I am not so stupid, or so hard,
Not to feel praise, or fame’s deserved reward.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Old age, with silent pace, comes creeping on,
Nauseates the praise which in her youth she won,
And hates the muse by which she was undone.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
So noiseless would I live, such death to find:
Like timely fruit, not shaken by the wind,
But ripely dropping from the sapless bough.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Moist earth produces corn and grass, but both
Too rank and too luxuriant in their growth.
Let not my land so large a promise boast,
Lest the lank ears in length of stem be lost.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Please thy pride, and search the herald’s roll,
Where thou shalt find thy famous pedigree,
Drawn from the root of some old Tuscan tree,
And thou, a thousand off, a fool of long degree.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Is it for this they study? to grow pale,
And miss the pleasures of a glorious meal?
For this, in rags accoutred are they seen,
And made the May-game of the public spleen?
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Yet then this little spot of earth well till’d,
A num’rous family with plenty fill’d,
The good old man and thrifty housewife spent
Their days in peace and fatten’d with content;
Enjoy’d the dregs of life, and lived to see
A long descending healthful progeny.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
What have I lost by my forefathers’ fault!
Why was I not the twentieth by descent
From a long restive race of droning kings?
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn:
The first in majesty of thought surpass’d,
The next in gracefulness; in both the last.
The force of nature could no further go:
To make a third she join’d the other two.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
He was too warm on picking work to dwell,
But faggoted his notions as they fell;
And if they rhymed and rattled, all was well.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Our swords so wholly did the fates employ,
That they, at length, grew weary to destroy;
Refused the work we brought, and out of breath,
Made sorrow and despair attend for death.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)
Whoe’er thou art, whose forward ears are bent
On state affairs, to guide the government;
Hear first what Socrates of old has said
To the loved youth whom he at Athens bred.
Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)