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Quotes from Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson — John Dryden

1631–1700 England

← All quotes by John Dryden

246 quotes

I must disclaim whate’er he can express;
His grovelling sense will show my passion less.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

'Tis not indeed my talent to engage
In lofty trifles, or to swell my page
With wind and noise.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Every scribbling man
Grows a fop as fast as e’er he can,
Prunes up, and asks his oracle the glass
If pink or purple best become his face?

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

When bounteous Autumn rears his head,
He joys to pull the ripen’d pear.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Much labour is required in trees;
Well must the ground be digg’d, and better dress’d,
New soil to make, and meliorate the rest.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

The peasant, innocent of all these ills,
With crooked ploughs the fertile fallow tills,
And the round year with daily labour fills.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

To dress the vines new labour is required,
Nor must the painful husbandman be tired.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Auspicious chief! thy race, in times to come,
Shall spread the conquests of imperial Rome.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Live then, thou great encourager of arts!
Live ever in our thankful hearts.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

He look’d in years, yet in his years were seen
A youthful vigor, and autumnal green.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

When the hoary head is hid in snow,
The life is in the leaf, and still between
The fits of falling snows appears the streaky green.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

The teeming earth, yet guileless of the plough,
And unprovoked, did fruitful stores allow.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

His corn and cattle were his only care,
And his supreme delight a country fair.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Tough thistles choked the fields, and kill’d the corn,
And an unthrifty crop of weeds was born.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

The bearded corn ensued
From earth unask’d; nor was that earth renew’d.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Where the vales with violets once were crown’d,
Now knotty burs and thorns disgrace the ground.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Most have found
A husky harvest from the grudging ground.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Ah that your business had been mine,
To pen the sheep.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Bid the laborious hind,
Whose harden’d hands did long in tillage toil,
Neglect the promised harvest of the soil.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

If your care to wheat alone extend,
Let Maia with her sisters first descend,
Before you trust in earth your future hope,
Or else expect a listless, lazy crop.

Disputed Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson (1880)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Dryden (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.