"Laureate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sufficient substratum of truth in his accusations to render it inexpedient to prosecute him for libel. The punishment of what was false would have involved the public exposure of what was true. The official party realized the force of the laureate's ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Geography. And if you will look about you, you will note that Natural Beauty is having an increasing effect upon the movements of men. There is a very definite relationship between the Beauty of the Earth and her human inhabitants. The Poet Laureate builds his house on the top of Boar's Hill not because the soil is specially productive up there so that he may be able to grow food, for the soil is rather poor; not because water is easily available, for it is ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... proper value. Bunyan was never, in our received sense of the word, wicked. He was chaste, sober, honest; but he was a bitter blackguard; that is, damned his own and his neighbour's eyes on slight or no occasion, and was fond of a row. In this our excellent Laureate has performed an important service to morality. For the transmutation of actual reprobates into saints is doubtless possible; but like the many recorded facts of corporeal alchemy, it is not ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... dead, who made to live Past kingdoms, with his vivid brain! Who could such warmth to shadows give, By the mere magic of his pen, That Charles and England rose again! Well sleeps he 'mid the Abbey's dust: And, Laureate! thy funereal verse Shall have such echo as it must From hearts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... has written that he was a jester, but not of the kind that Shakespeare drew in Yorick. He was not only,—so the writer implied,—the maker of jibes and fantastic devices, but the bard of friendship and affection, of melodious lyrical conceits; he was the laureate of children—dear for his "Wynken, Blynken and Nod" and "Little Boy Blue"; the scholarly book-lover, withal, who relished and paraphrased his Horace, who wrote with delight a quaint archaic English ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... 1757 succeeded Colley Cibber as poet-laureate, and dying in 1785 was followed by Thomas Warton. From Warton the line of succession is Pye, Southey, Wordsworth, Tennyson. See post, under June ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the most remarkable work that Jasmin had up to this time composed. There is no country where an author is so popular, when he is once known, as in France. When Jasmin's poem was published he became, by universal consent, the Poet Laureate of the South. Yet some of the local journals of Bordeaux made light of his appearance in that city for the purpose of reciting his as yet unknown poem. "That a barber and hairdresser of Agen," they said, "speaking and writing in a vulgar tongue, should attempt to amuse or enlighten ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... was Edward's poet laureate, Baston, a Carmelite friar, who had accompanied the army for the purpose of writing a poem on the English victory. His ransom was fixed at a poem on the Scotch victory at Bannockburn, which the ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... whom the Mermaid Inn Had dubbed our London laureate, hauled the cask Out of its ancient harbourage. "Ben," he cried, Bustling into the room with Dekker and Brome, "The prentices are up!" Ben raised his head Out of the chimney-corner where he drowsed, And listened, reaching slowly for ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... hymn, my lord of Surrey?" he cried with a laugh, as the other hastily thrust the tablets, which he had hitherto held in his hand, into his bosom. "You will rival Master Skelton, the poet laureate, and your friend Sir Thomas Wyat, too, ere long. But will it please your lord-ship to quit for a moment the society of the celestial Nine, and descend to earth, while I inform you that, acting as your representative, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... as appears to me, was more accurate and in keeping with Tennysonian genius than this choosing Greek antiquity and mediaevalism as the theater for his poetry; for he was the chief romance poet since Edmund Spenser. Spenser and Tennyson are the poets laureate of chivalry. What Spenser did in his age, that Tennyson did in his. So recall the chronological location of Tennyson's poetry. "Tithonus," "Oenone," "Ulysses," "Tiresias," "Amphion," "The Hesperides," "The Merman," "Demeter and Persephone." ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... brooded with peculiar intensity—on the two former, because they were patriots; and on the latter, because she was a beautiful woman; and his allusions to them rank with the finest parts in his or any poetry. He seemed especially adapted to be the poet-laureate of Wallace—a modern edition, somewhat improved, of the broad, brawny, ragged bard who actually, it is probable, attended in the train of Scotland's patriot hero, and whose constant occupation it was to change the gold of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... on the prince during his last illness. I was supping with Veraci, the poet-laureate, on the eve of the prince's death, and in the course of supper Algardi ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... death. The Queen deplored him as "our immortal hero"—a servant of the Crown "devoted, loyal, and faithful" beyond all example; the nation endeavoured by a funeral of unprecedented sumptuousness to show its sense of loss; the poet laureate devoted to his memory a majestic Ode, hardly surpassed by any in the language for its stately, mournful music, and finely faithful in its characterisation of ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... by MR. SPEDDING in this discovery (if discovery you and your readers will allow it to be), for the satisfaction I am thereby assured of in the concurrence of so acute a critic as himself, and of a poet so true as the poet-laureate. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... heard your Laureate sing, That pity was a royal thing; Under your mighty ancestors, we Pigs Were bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs, 40 Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew, And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too; But now our sties ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... read into a dissyllable, and pretty much like Boney's old friend on the road from Moscow, General Doct'roff, who 'doctor'd them off,' as the Laureate observes, and prescribed for the whole French army gratis. But now ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... abolition movement as a crotchet of the eccentric and the long-haired. But when the civil war broke out he lent his pen, his tongue, and his own flesh and blood to the cause of the Union. The individuality of Holmes's writings comes in part from their local and provincial bias. He has been the laureate of Harvard College and the bard of Boston city, an urban poet, with a cockneyish fondness for old Boston ways and things—the Common and the Frog Pond, Faneuil Hall and King's Chapel and the Old South, Bunker Hill, Long Wharf, the Tea Party, and the town crier. It was Holmes who invented the ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... Look at me; I am starved—In yon hamlet I dwelt And contented for years no distresses I felt, Till the TAX, that my master had no means to pay, From the comforts of home drove me famished away; 'Tis for life I contend—Praise, Honour, Renown, The song of the Bard, or the laureate Crown, Will ne'er teach my blood in its freshness to flow, Ne'er teach me with health and with vigour to glow; Revenge, then, Revenge"——Exhausted he sunk,— And back from the sight in horror they shrunk. A silence ensued—Thus the president spoke, "This Council, ...
— The Council of Dogs • William Roscoe
... fixed, not on any printed page, but on a spray of warmly- blushing almond blossom, where a well-fed thrush, ruffling its softly speckled breast, was singing a wild strophe concerning its mate, which, could human skill have languaged its meaning, might have given ideas to a nation's laureate. Yet John Walden found unalloyed happiness in this apparently vague and vacant way. There was an acute sense of joy for him in the repeated sweetness of the thrush's warbling,—the light breeze, stirring through a great bush of early ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... from Mr. Malarius, the public teacher of Noroe, and laureate of the Botanical Society. It contained a check for one hundred kroners, and begged that he might be attached to the expedition as the ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... observed in the Introduction that this grand lyric gave the model for Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade." This latter poem appears along with "Maud," and another piece in the same slender volume contains unequivocal proof of the Laureate's acquaintance with Drayton. In the powerful poem entitled "Will" ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... turned for a moment to catch a last glimpse of the University dome, towering over the treetops; and we felt very tenderly toward everyone there. But there were "sweet girl graduates" on board; and, as you know well enough, it required no laureate to sing their praises, though he has done so with all the ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... seasonably extra charge,—you can purchase the Christmas Number of the Penny Illustrated, wherein Mr. CLEMENT SCOTT "our dear departed" (on tour round the world—"globe-trotting"), leads off with some good verses. Will he be chosen Laureate? He is away; and it is characteristic of a truly great poet to be "absent." And the Editor, that undefeated story-teller, tells one of his best stories in his best style, and gives us a delightful picture of Miss ELSIE NORMAN. "Alas! she is another's! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... 'Sardanapalus'?" exclaimed the actor, throwing up his hands. "Why, it's one of the finest things ever put upon the boards. Full of telling effects, and not too many bothering lengths, you know. The Poet Laureate, dear good man, worried my life out a year ago to let him write a play upon the subject especially for me. The part of Sardanapalus was to be devised so as to bring out all my particular—er—capabilities, and any little hints that might occur ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... Centurions and wise men of the times, You've made a Poet Laureate, now you must hear his rhymes. Extend your ears and I'll respond by shortening up my tale:— Man cannot live by verse alone, he ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... Geraldine tells her story to him. This, however, the poet judiciously leaves out, and only signifies that the Baron recognized in her the daughter of his old friend Sir Roland, with whom he had had a deadly quarrel. Now, however, he despatches his tame poet, or laureate, called Bard Bracy, to invite him and his family over, promising to forgive every thing, and even make an apology for what had passed. To understand what follows, we own, surpasses our comprehension. Mr Bracy, the poet, recounts a strange dream he has just ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... Rome could none esteem But Virtue's patriot theme, You lov'd her hills, and led her laureate band; But staid to sing alone To one distinguish'd throne, And turn'd thy face, ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... "a league of incest" at Geneva, in 1816-17, with "two girls," Mary Godwin (Mrs. Shelley) and Jane Clairmont. Byron not only denied the charge, but retorted upon him, in his "Observations upon an Article in 'Blackwood's Magazine'" (March 15, 1820), as the author of 'Wat Tyler' and poet laureate, the man who "wrote treason and serves the King," the ex-pantisocrat who advocated "all things, including women, in common." Southey's 'Vision of Judgment', an apotheosis of George III., published in 1821, gave Byron a second provocation and a second opportunity, by speaking in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... to being pointed out by the passer-by as the minstrel of the Roman lyre, or, in other words, as the laureate, that his satire provokes sufficient criticism to draw from him a defense and a justification of himself against the charge of cynicism, and that he finally records a greater freedom from the tooth of envy, are all indications of the prominence to which he rose. ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... high in the favor of the Emperor Maximilian, by whose order he was crowned poet-laureate of Germany. The wreath of laurel was woven by the fair hands of Constance Peutinger, who was called the handsomest girl in Germany, and with great ceremony she put this wreath on his head in the presence of the Emperor ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... every week you opened your hoard Of truthful and tasteful tales— How you sat on the knees of the Laureate Lord, How you danced with the Prince of Wales— And we knew that the Sunday Times had ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... Folios and in the Quarto of 1691 the play is divided into acts, but not into scenes, though the first act is headed Actus Primus, Scaena Prima. The first systematic division into scenes was made by Nicholas Rowe, poet laureate to George I, in the edition which he issued in six octavo volumes in 1709. In this edition Rowe, an experienced playwright, marked the entrances and exits of the characters and introduced many stage directions and the list of dramatis personae which has been the basis for all ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... make small economical reforms, such as bring on a government the reproach of meanness without producing any perceptible relief to the finances. One of the victims of his injudicious parsimony was the Poet Laureate. Orders were given that, in the new patent which the demise of the crown made necessary, the annual butt of sack, originally granted to Jonson, and continued to Jonson's successors, should be omitted. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Hans!" cried Tom. "He's the true poet of spiderdom!" and then he added: "Hans, we'll crown you poet laureate if you say so." ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... Shelley and our first-born Keats; the singer of Cynthia in verse well worthy of Endymion, who would seem to have died as a poet in the same fatal year of his age that Keats died as a man; the first adequate English laureate of the nightingale, to be supplanted or equalled by none until the advent of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the speculations of kings. Masters of the destinies of others, mankind flatter them into a belief that their power can almost control fate itself. Accordingly, the visit of the butterfly did not produce much permanent inquietude. The poets-laureate and literati of the court turned it into numerous sentimental conceits; amongst others, that the insect had fastened on the princess's cheek mistaking it for a rose. This idea branched out into a hundred elegies, a thousand madrigals, and fifteen hundred songs, ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... Peter Laureate wishes to know whether the work upon "Horal Surgery" is not a new-invented description of almanack, as it is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... unfeeling style the dregs of the populace, a haggard, houseless, penniless man, in rags and tatters: I allude to Manuel, the—what shall I call him?—seller of lottery tickets, driver of death carts, or poet laureate in Gypsy songs? I wonder whether thou art still living, my friend Manuel; thou gentleman of Nature's forming- -honest, pure-minded, humble, yet dignified being! Art thou still wandering through the courts of beautiful Safacoro, or on the banks of the Len Baro, thine eyes fixed in vacancy, and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... introduced to Pope Leo X., as a buffoon, but was promoted to the laurel. This laureate was ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... leading thread of literary research might be profitably followed by the student who should trace the footsteps of all the poets, dead and gone, that have held, in England, the office of laureate. John Kay was laureate in the reign of King Edward the Fourth; Andrew Bernard in that of King Henry the Seventh; John Skelton in that of King Henry the Eighth, and Edmund Spenser in that of Queen Elizabeth. Since then the succession has included the names of Samuel Daniel, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... publishing season promises to be a brisk one: we are to have good books of history, travel, and science, besides something from Carlyle and the Laureate; and in the matter of light literature there will be no lack; Thackeray is again in the field, with three volumes of the old-fashioned sort, so acceptable to novel readers; and Sir Thomas Talfourd has found time for literary as well as legal work. A learned Hindoo, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... calm, O white and laureate head! Lie calm, O Dead, that art not dead, Since from the voiceless grave, Thy voice shall speak to old and young While song yet speaks an English tongue By Charles' ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... (1774-1843) was poet laureate of England, and a most prolific writer of poetry and miscellaneous prose. His great prominence in his own day has been succeeded by an obscurity so complete that only a few items of his work are now ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... court-hirelings, too romantic for the herd of vulgar politicians, our enthusiast stood at bay, and at last turned on the pivot of a subtle casuistry to the unclean side: but his discursive reason would not let him trammel himself into a poet-laureate or stamp-distributor, and he stopped, ere he had quite passed that well-known "bourne from whence no traveller returns"—and so has sunk into torpid, uneasy repose, tantalized by useless resources, haunted by vain imaginings, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... England. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1793. In 1804 he established himself permanently at Greta Hall, near Keswick, Cumberland, in the "Lake Country," where he enjoyed the friendship and society of Wordsworth and Coleridge, other poets of the "Lake School." He was appointed poet laureate in 1813, and received a pension of 300 Pounds a year from the government in 1835. Mr. Southey was a voluminous writer in both prose and verse. As a poet, he can not be placed in the first rank, although some of his minor poems are very ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... heads of the general public.' His opinion was, no doubt, correct, as "Ardath" still remains the least 'popular' of any book I have ever written. Nevertheless it brought me the unsought and very generous praise of the late Poet Laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson, as well as the equally unsought good opinion and personal friendship of the famous statesman, William Ewart Gladstone, while many of the better-class literary journals vied with one another in according me an ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... general taste when he places his garden "near some fair town." Our present laureate, though a truly inspired poet, and a genuine lover of Nature even in her remotest retreats, has the garden of his preference, "not ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... thoroughly in earnest as Mr William Allan." The Dundee Advertiser of August 17th concludes a long and very favourable review of "Heather Bells, &c."—"The 'Harp of the North,' so beautifully invoked by Sir Walter in his 'Lady of the Lake,' has been long asleep—her mountains are silent—and what if our Laureate of Calydon—our Modern Ossian—were destined to hail from Bonnie Dundee?" The Scotsman of Oct. 1st, says—"There is true pathos in many of the poems. Such a piece as 'Jessie's Leavin'' must find its way to the hearts in many a cottage home. Indeed, 'Heather Bells,' both deserves, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... restaurant keeper in a small town by doing some odd jobs for the man. The food he gave Billy was wrapped in an old copy of the Kansas City Star. When Billy reached camp he tossed the package to Bridge, who, in addition to his honorable post as poet laureate, was also cook. Then Billy walked down to the stream, near-by, that he might wash away the grime and sweat of honest toil from his hands ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Betty lightly on the forehead. It was as if she had set the seal of her approval upon her, and to be approved by her beautiful godmother,—ah, that meant more to the devoted little heart than any one could dream; far more, even, than if she had been made the proud laureate of a queen. ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... quaint thirteenth century furniture, bronzes, and Venetian ware. There are some fine engravings of Miss Brunton—who became Countess of Craven—Kemble, Garrick, Phelps, and Mrs. Siddons. A picture of Mrs. Kendal in "The Falcon" was done at the express wish of, and paid for by, the late Poet Laureate. Tennyson said it reminded him of a woman he liked and admired. In the shadow is a fine bust of Macready, given by the great actor to the father of Mrs. Kendal; resting against the fireplace on either side are the two lances used in "The Queen's Shilling," and close by ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... time when the nobility of Britain were said, by the poet laureate, to be the admirers and protectors of the arts, and were acknowledged by the whole nation to be the patrons of music—William and Henry, youths under twenty years of age, brothers, and the sons of ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... Babylonian professions that of the poet. It is true that a sort of poet-laureate existed at the court, and that we hear of a piece of land being given by the King to one of them for some verses which he had composed in honor of the sovereign. But poetry was not a separate profession, and the poet must be included in the class of scribes, or among ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... which led to the deeds he must celebrate. Wo be to him, we say—for as sure as there is truth in the retributive justice of posterity, he will attain an eminent position, not in the roll of beatified bards, but in that of the British blockheads, and be elected by unanimous consent as a proper Laureate for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... genius, or of the breadth of intellectual and spiritual interests which was so signally manifested in all that Tennyson thought and wrote? Among the "Beacon Lights" in the present series of volumes the Laureate of the age has not hitherto been included, and to fill the gap the writer of this sketch has ventured, not, of course, to say all that might be said of the great poet, but modestly to deal with the man and his art, so that neither his era nor his work shall ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... wasn't the daughter of Mr. Alfred Tennyson, the poet-laureate of England, but was as sweet as any one of that gentleman's poems—had been to the city; and she had brought home so many wondrous improvements that her two little bosom friends, Lu Medway and Kathie Dysart, were almost ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... of Robert Southey, Esq.—Sir T. Lawrence—We hope the president's portrait will please the laureate, for he has been rather tenacious about his "likenesses" which have been engraved. The present is, perhaps, one of the most intellectual portraits in the room, but is too energetic even for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... Pembroke, wife of that Philip Herbert who was the brother of Shakespeare's friend, showed how tenderly she remembered her old instructor, Daniel, the poet-laureate, by erecting a handsome monument to him in Beckington Church, bearing this inscription: "Here lies, expecting the second coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the dead body of Samuel Daniel, Esq., who was tutor to the Lady Anne Clifford in her youth. She was ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... on canvas, and poets sung them at eventide. The beauties of their life, and their tragic death, were given by the poet-laureate of the day in the words I have just transcribed; and such an impression did these make on the minds of the inhabitants, that the whole population took them to heart, and, with tears in their eyes, taught them to their children, even unto the third ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... dunce epic"), a satire by Alexander Pope—written to revenge himself upon his literary enemies. The plot is this: Eusden the poet-laureate being dead, the goddess of Dulness elects Colley Cibber as his successor. The installation is celebrated by games, the most important being the "reading of two voluminous works, one in verse and the other in prose, without nodding." King Cibber is then taken to the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... he continued, his heavy, lustreless eyes coming to a stand-still upon her, "that though I accept in all reverence the position of woman as the equal of man, as promulgated in The Princess, by our lion-hearted Laureate, nevertheless I advance beyond him in that respect. I hold"—in a voice calculated to impress the whole table—"that woman is man's superior, and that she degrades herself when she endeavors to place herself on ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... remember, too, those weighty words of warning which the Laureate of the Empire wrote nearly twenty years ago, of ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... can hardly abstain from bestowing it on the rest of those we have named. Milton, at all events, has identified himself with Cromwell as thoroughly as one man ever identified himself with another, and whatever aspersion is cast on "Worcester's laureate wreath" must fall equally on the intermingling bays. We may say this without pretending to know what the exact meaning of "Philistine" now is. Originally, no doubt, it pointed to some specific defect on the part of those with regard to whom it was used, and possibly ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... albatross, whence come those clouds of spiritual wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in all imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but God's great, unflattering laureate, Nature.* ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the Laureate obedient to an editor's decree Puts his verses in the columns of the Times; When the endless minor poet in an endless minor key Gives the public his unnecessary rhymes, When you're weary of the poems which they constantly compose, And endeavour their ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... The Laureate had read this, and yet considers it the language of a heart that 'never was hardened.' He says that 'the wickedness of the tinker has been greatly overcharged, and it is taking the language of self-accusation ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... also against their Thomas Moores, Samuel Rogerses, and Walter Scotts, who went about the country harping and singing against English oppression. No such turbulent guests were to be received. The plan of making them poets-laureate, or converting them to loyalty by pensions of 100 pounds per annum, had not then been thought of. They debarred the Irish even from the pleasure of running away, and fixed them ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... pessimistic remark, made by a hopeful and cheerful man, lies in the fact that we place small premium in either honor or money on the business of teaching. As, in the olden times, barbers and scullions ranked with musicians, and the Master of the Hounds wore a bigger medal than the Poet Laureate, so do we pay our teachers the same as coachmen and coal-heavers, giving them a plentiful lack of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... luck! A "run" unprecedented, Or almost so; and fodder With which the Laureate's Bird had been contented: Fortune has freaks far odder Than e'en a poet's whimsies, any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... classes and in almost all places. It was smoked freely in the streets. In some verses prefixed to an edition of Skelton's "Elinour Rumming" which appeared in 1624, the ghost of Skelton, who was poet-laureate to King Henry VIII, was made to say that he ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... Complete Poems of Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. With numerous Illustrations by Eminent Artists, and Three Characteristic Portraits. 8vo, Paper, 75 ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... of the "French spy," whose mission was well understood, was hailed by the English nation with execration, modified only by a few stilted lines of greeting from Dryden, as laureate, and some indecent verses by St Evremond—efforts which the new beauty equally rewarded with gracious smiles and thanks. That the English frankly hated her without having even seen her was a matter of small concern—she was prepared for it. All she cared for was that ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... trampers of every species jig in turn, or altogether, shaking their rags unto the jocund tune; and where is there a blither party? Burns has pictured the scene in his 'Jolly Beggars,' and he is the laureate ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... lune, what vain vision, Thy laureate, Springtide, may move To sing thee,—oh, bitter derision! A season of laughter and love? You make a man mad beyond measure, O Spring, and thy lauders like thee: Thy flowers, thy pastimes ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... come after us will be more impressed than we are by the Laureate's versatility. He has touched so many strings, from "Will Waterproof's Monologue," so far above Praed, to the agony of "Rizpah," the invincible energy of "Ulysses," the languor and the fairy music of the "Lotus Eaters," the grace ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... man of letters and poet-laureate, was born at Bristol on August 12, 1774, and received at various schools a desultory education, which he completed by an idle year at Oxford. Here he became acquainted with Coleridge; and Southey, who had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... we dare not soar', are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso a madman, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was a poet laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has done ample justice to the great names now referred to. Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... horse-shoe valley, and the river brimming out from the 'monarch of springs.' In these new lawns of Helicon he made a new home for his books, and tried to forget in their company the tumults that had driven him from Italy. In 1340 he received offers of a laureate's crown from Rome, the capital of the world, and from Paris, 'the birth-place of learning.' 'I start to-day,' he wrote to Colonna, 'to receive my reward over the graves of those who were the pride of ancient Rome, and in the very theatre of ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... introduced him to Augustus, who, according to Suetonius, offered him a place in his own household, which the poet prudently declined. But as the unrivalled lyric poet of the time Horace gradually acquired the position of poet-laureate; and his ode written to command for the celebration of the Secular Games in 17 B.C., with the official odes which followed it on the victories of Tiberius and Drusus, and on the glories of the Augustan ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... (Chief or President). In this same year also the poet married Mdlle. Marie Riviere of Dijon, and this lady, who was named first Queen of the Felibrige by Albert de Quintana of Catalonia, the poet-laureate of the year 1878 at the great Floral Games held in Montpellier, has become at heart and in ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... he managed to live on less than two hundred dollars a year, derived from the proceeds of poems, pamphlets and essays. At this time he was already an "Academy Laureate," having received honorable mention for a poem submitted ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... make the plainest face to be beautiful. In the calm of scholarship men have given up the thought that culture consists of an exquisite refinement in manners and dress, in language and equipage. The poet laureate makes Maud the type of polished perfection. She is "icily regular, splendidly null," for culture is more of the heart than of the mind. But as eloquence means that an orator has so mastered the laws of posture, and gesture and thought and ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... genius, he ruled vast provinces with justice, wisdom, and power, and lastly, obedient to his Sovereign's command, he died in the heroic attempt to save men, women, and children, from imminent and deadly peril." The nation felt that their Poet Laureate, Lord Tennyson, did but speak the simple truth when he penned ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... is as old as Homer. Its laureate is Montesquieu. The more northerly you go, he said, the sterner the man grows. You must scorch a Muscovite to make him feel. Gray was a convert. One of the prose hints for his noble fragment of a didactic ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... poet Chatterton received his education. His memorial is in the churchyard of St Mary, and in the church a chest contains the records among which he claimed to have discovered some of the manuscripts which were in reality his own. A house in Wine Street was the birthplace of the poet-laureate Robert ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... individuality or personal value. But as cases it was different. The more broken a man was, the more precarious his grip on life, the greater his significance in the eyes of Doctor Bicknell. He would as readily forsake a poet laureate suffering from a common accident for a nameless, mangled vagrant who defied every law of life by refusing to die, as would a child forsake a Punch ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... expressed here. The reasons for this depreciation are not hard to give, and as they form a base for, and indeed really a part of, my critical estimate they may be stated shortly. The "Bohemia"[285] of which Murger was the laureate, both in prose and verse, is a country whose charms have been admitted by some of the greatest, but which no wise person has ever regarded, much less recommended, as providing any city to dwell ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... lyric as opposed to epic verse is due to this habit of feeling. A good example maybe found in the work of Mr Swinburne: the latter is the better poetry, the earlier remains the more popular — because of its eloquence of margin. Mr Tupper might long ago have sat with laureate brow but for his neglect of this first principle. The song of Sigurd, our one epic of the century, is pitiably unmargined, and so has never won the full meed of glory it deserves; while the ingenious gentleman who wrote "Beowulf,'' our other English ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... be so alarmingly outspoken when she sings our praises to strangers. She gave him to understand that I am a full-fledged author and playwright, the peer of any poet laureate who ever held a pen; that Lloyd is a combination of princess and angel and halo-crowned saint, and Joyce a model big sister and an all-round genius. How she managed in the short time they were alone to tell him as much as she did will always ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of the shores of Attica lies the island of Aegina, famous in legend as the home of Aeacus, grandfather of Achilles, and distinguished for its school of sculpture, and for its mighty breed of athletes, whose feats are celebrated in the laureate strains of Pindar. The Aeginetans had obtained the first prize for valour displayed in the battle of Salamis, and for many years they had pressed the Athenians hard in the race for maritime supremacy. They were now attacked by an overwhelming Athenian force, and after a stubborn resistance ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... the author of a poem entitled 'The Chronicle of England unto the Reign of King Edward the Fourth, in Verse.' It has no poetic merit, and little interest, except to the antiquary. In the reign of the above king we find the first mention of a Poet Laureate. John Kay was appointed by Edward, when he returned from Italy, Poet Laureate to the king, but has, perhaps fortunately for the world, left behind him no poems. Would that the same had been the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... these latter days quite as much as it did in the classic times of Augustus with Virgil and Horace for his intimates, and of Petrarch crowned at the Capitol laureate of all Italy during the vacancy of a popedom in the Vatican. Not but that, with or without any titular distinction, authorship is practically the most noticeable rank amongst us. Many will pass by a duke who would ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... He is the second in order of time amongst the Grecian historians who survive, and the first of those (a class which Mr. Southey, the laureate, always speaks of as the corruptors of genuine history) who affect to treat it philosophically. If the philosophic historians are not always so faithless as Mr. Southey alleges, they are, however, always guilty of dulness. Commend us to one picturesque, garrulous ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... disinterment of their great relative, accepted the Restoration gladly and lived to chuckle over the Revolution. The forgetfulness, no less than the vindictiveness, of men is often surprising. Marvell, who played the part of Laureate during the Protectorate, produced two songs for the conventionally joyful occasion. The second of the two is decidedly pretty ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... summoned, but secured his return for Agmondesham in March 1627. He appears to have been in these years a silent senator, taking little interest or share in the debates, but retiring from them to offer the quit-rent of his versicles—a laureate without salary, and yet not probably much more sincere than laureates generally are; for although his loyalty was undoubted, his expressions of it in rhyme are often hyperbolical ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... my mind. He, Guido, like Tristram, would in a short space clasp the gemmed necklace round the throat of one as fair and false as the fabled Iseulte, and I—should I figure as the wronged king? How does the English laureate put it in his idyl ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... whistles to keep up his courage, for he dare not investigate now, as he did in 1883 and 1884, the employment of women and children, lest he show how much worse their condition has become during the intervening years, and thereby forfeit forever his position of laureate to the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... somewhere we knew The beautiful gates must open to our quest, Somewhere that marvellous City of the West Would lift its towers and palace domes in view, And, to! at last its mystery is made known— Its only dwellers maidens fair and young, Its Princess such as England's Laureate sung; And safe from capture, save by love alone, It lends its beauty to the lake's green shore, And Norumbega is a ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet laureate. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... thirteenth year, when he was sent to the famous Westminster School, in what is now the heart of London. A few years after finishing his course at Cambridge University he went back to London, and lived there chiefly during the rest of his long and busy life. At the age of thirty-nine he was made poet-laureate and historiographer-royal, although his best work was not done until after he was fifty years old. From Milton's death, 1674, until his own in 1700, "Glorious John," as he was called, reigned without a rival in English letters; and one can picture him as a ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... probable. Few women, indeed, had paid less attention to dress. Now and then, in the course of five years, she had been asked to read aloud or to write a copy of verses. But better readers might easily have been found; and her verses were worse than even the Poet Laureate's Birthday Odes. Perhaps that economy, which was among her Majesty's most conspicuous virtues, had something to do with her conduct on this occasion. Miss Burney had never hinted that she expected ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from Alhambra; he has been wandering about in all directions. He has been to the Lakes, and is now at Edinburgh. He likes Southey. He gave the laureate a quantity of hints for his next volume of the Peninsular War, but does not speak very warmly of Wordsworth: gentlemanly man, but ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... best worth seeing where all is beautiful and inspiring. If I had possessed a little foresight I should have avoided Wales, for, having proved apt at itinerary doggerel, I was solemnly created, immediately on arrival, Mistress of Rhymes and Travelling Laureate to the party—an office, however honourable, that is no sinecure since it obliges me to write rhymed eulogies or diatribes on Dolgelly, Tan-y-Bulch, Gyn-y-Coed, Llanrychwyn, and other Welsh hamlets whose names offer breakneck ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... scarlet coats, and in spurred boots which reach above their knees, clank through the halls. Scotch lords sit about, and exhibit legs of which they are justly proud. Here, with swinging gait, wanders the queen's piper, a sort of poet-laureate of the bagpipes, arrayed in plaid and carrying upon his arm the soft, enchanting instrument to the music of which, no doubt, the queen herself dances. The music of the orchestra is perfect, and he must be a dull man who does ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... society is—and that is just the reason why we are not enthusiastic. We are all ready to 'die for the throne,' etc., but we don't see any immediate probability of our devotion being tested. So the laureate only rhymes loyally, and he at stated seasons, and ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... during which time he revised plays and composed songs, and grew closely in touch with the life of the Indiana farmer. About 1873 he first contributed verses, especially in the Hoosier dialect, to the papers, and before long had attained a recognized position as poet-laureate of the Western country folk. His materials are the incidents and aspects of village life, especially of the Indiana villages. These he interprets in a manner as acceptable to the na[:i]ve as to the sophisticated, which ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... reason for which I refuse you: Love's Goddess has oft to her parents complain'd, Of my favouring a bard who her empire disdain'd; That at my instigation, a poem you writ, Which to beauty and youth preferr'd judgment and wit; That, to make you a Laureate, I gave the first voice, Inspiring the Britons t'approve of my choice. Jove sent her to me, her power to try; The Goddess of Beauty what God can deny? She forbids your preferment; I grant her desire. Appease the fair Goddess: ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... hand, is very narrow. Dean Swift, who lodged here, is perhaps one of the best-known names, and his friend Atterbury, who first had a house facing the Embankment, afterwards came and lived opposite to him. Thomas Shadwell, Poet Laureate, was associated with the place, and also Bowack, whose "Antiquities of Middlesex," incomplete though it is, remains a valuable book of reference. Bowack lived near the Rectory, and not far from him was the Old White Horse Inn, famous for the beauty ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... what was said, and were half as well pleased as if they had said the sprightly things themselves; and mighty well contented were they to be secondhand repeaters of the pretty things. But once I faced the laureate squatted upon one of the benches, with a face more wrinkled than ordinary with disappointment 'I thought,' said I, 'you were of the party at the tea-treats—Miss Chudleigh has gone into the tea-room.'—'Pshaw!' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... FitzGerald told Grout that Woodbridge should feel itself honoured. John had not quite understood, so presently took a chance of asking my father who that gentleman was Mr FitzGerald had been talking of. "Mr Tennyson," said my father, "the poet- laureate." "Dissay," {90} said John, warily; "anyhow he didn't fare to know much about hosses when I ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... My dear Knave, how wonderful of you! You shall be Poet Laureate. A Poet Laureate has ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... as to oblige us to dismiss the first seven Laureates with a dash of that ruthless criticism with which Niebuhr, the regicide, dispatched the seven kings of Rome. To mark clearly the bounds between the mythical and the indubitable, a glance at the following brief of the Laureate fasti will greatly assist us, speeding us forward at once to the substance of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... seat each year. The principal elective officers of the United are the President, two Vice-Presidents, the Treasurer, the Official Editor and the three members of the Board of Directors. There are also a Historian, a Laureate Recorder, and two Manuscript Managers. Appointed by the President are the members of the two Departments of Criticism, the Supervisor of Amendments, the Official Publisher, and the Secretary of the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... base insinuation with scorn. For I humbly conceived that I was a poet of the first water; and had indeed corrected a great many mistakes in Wordsworth and other writers, and written fifty-six or fifty-seven sonnets before ever the club was thought of. And Stray himself, who was accounted our Laureate, had only written thirty-four, and they averaged quite a line ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... "this ain't an ordinary case. This chap's going to be the future Poet Laureate. Now, when the Prince of Wales invites him to dine at Marlborough 'ouse, 'e don't want to go there tacked on to a girl that carries aitches with her in a bag, and don't know which end of the spoon out of which to drink ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... when they are on their travels feel the depressing influence of bad weather. Those lines of the Laureate— ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... See p. 114.—119 to 125. Parkinson the poet: This character, who appears for the first time among the inedited episodes of Lavengro, was a real one, although his true name (Parkerson) is given somewhat veiled, as usual with Mr. Borrow. He seems to have been the poet-laureate of farmers, corn-merchants, drovers and publicans, selling his muse to the highest bidder, at first in printed sheets of eight pages, and subsequently gathered into pamphlets of thirty or more pages which he offered ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... fugiens et denuo pugnabitur;" and I find in some collections of the sixteenth century both the Latin and Greek given upon the authority of Plutarch! Langius, in his Polyanthea (a copious common-place book which would outweigh twenty of our late Laureate's) has given the apophthegm verbatim from Erasmus, and has boldly appended Plutarch's name. But the more extraordinary course is that which one Gualandi took, who published, at Venice, in 1568,{4} in 4to., an omnium gatherum, in five books, from various ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... Mill. William Wordsworth (1770-1850), poet-laureate (1843-1850), is by many regarded as the third poet in English literature, after Shakspere and Milton, whose places are unassailable. Other candidates for the third place are Chaucer and Spenser. "The silence that is in the lonely hills" is loosely quoted from Wordsworth's Song at the Feast ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Tennyson's "In Memoriam." (Dedicated by Permission to the Poet-Laureate.) Fcap. 8vo. ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... himself. Occupying the position almost of a court poet, he continued to work for Mahmud, and this son of a Turkish slave became a patron of letters. On February 25, 1010, his work was finished. As poet laureate, he had inserted many a verse in praise of his master. Yet the story goes, that though this master had covenanted for a gold dirhem a line, he sent Firdusi sixty thousand silver ones, which the poet spurned ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureate. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... but of notable stirring of courage; not of abusing man's wit, but of strengthening man's wit; not banished, but honoured by Plato; let us rather plant more laurels for to ingarland the poets' heads (which honour of being laureate, as besides them only triumphant captains were, is a sufficient authority to show the price they ought to be held in) than suffer the ill-favoured breath of such wrong speakers once to blow upon ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... "Civium ardor!" As I have not so much dignity of character to fill up my time, I could like a little more company. With all this leisure, you may imagine that I might as well be writing an ode or so upon the victory; but as I cannot build upon the Laureate's[2] place till I know whether Lord Carteret or Mr. Pelham will carry the Treasury, I have bounded my compliments to a slender collection of quotations against I should have any occasion for them. Here are some ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Malay Archipelago, steering north, south, east, west, as if at haphazard, until only the navigating officers and the director of the Society knew how our course lay. We were searching for an island about the bearings of which, it transpired, some mistake had been made. I do not know whether the great laureate ever sailed these seas. But I know that his glorious islands of flowers and islands of fruit, with all their luscious imagery, were here eclipsed by our own islands of foliage. The long lagoons, the deep ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... for membership to a proposed British Academy, Gladstone received the largest number of ballots, Tennyson the next and Matthew Arnold came third. He was considered the best literary critic in England, and if he had outlived Tennyson he would have succeeded him as laureate. He showed a dignified reserve in only publishing a very few books. Two small volumes of poetry, his "Essays in Criticism", which has become a standard work, and his American essays, are all that I know ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... may have been a cousin of Jock Johnstone the Tinkler, without knowing it. Well, his father died when he was little, and his mother married a brick-layer; and Ben used to carry hods of mortar up ladders,—oh me! what a strange world it is! By-and-by he was made Laureate,—the first Laureate,—and he was very great and glorious, and wrote masques and plays and poems, and quarrelled with Inigo Jones—no! I can't stop to tell you who he was," seeing the question in Rose's eyes,—"and grew very fat. But when he was old they neglected him, ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... have some other good comic writers living, such as Sir Richard Steele and Mr. Cibber, who is an excellent player, and also Poet Laureate—a title which, how ridiculous soever it may be thought, is yet worth a thousand crowns a year (besides some considerable privileges) to the person who enjoys it. Our illustrious Corneille ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... Autumn! Poet King! The Laureate of the Seasons, whose rare songs Are such as lyrist never hoped to fling On the fine ear of an admiring world. Autumn, the Poet, Painter, and true King! His gorgeous Ideality ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... them less of wild beasts. Some have thought it omnipotent for this; others have given it as a sign of the decline and fall of the nobler part of us. Neither is, and both are true. Art does, as our Laureate says, make nobler in us what is higher than the senses through which it passes; but it can only make nobler what is already noble; it cannot regenerate, neither can it of itself debase and emasculate and bedevil mankind; but it is a symptom, and a fatal one, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... headed by Professor Wilson, declared he was Burns's rival as a song-writer, and his superior in anything relating to external nature! indeed they wrote of him as unsurpassed by poet or painter in his fairy tales of ancient time, dubbing him Poet Laureate to the Queen of Elfland; and yet his unrefined manner tempted these friends to speak of him familiarly as the greatest hog in all Apollo's herd, or the Boar of the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the tablet. His memory still survives in two {45} Westminster streets, called Barton Street and Cowley Street, after his name and the place where he was buried. Mrs. Pritchard was honoured by a memorial near Shakespeare's statue, upon which the poet-laureate of the day wrote a florid inscription. She began her professional career after Booth's death, but lived long enough to tread the same boards as Garrick, whose grave is just below; she predeceased the younger actor by ten years. Only one actress, Ann ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... pair of childish eyes, bright and empty, which smiled with winning simplicity. The son of a stonemason of Plassans, he had achieved great success at the local art competitions, and had afterwards come to Paris as the town laureate, with an allowance of eight hundred francs per annum, for a period of four years. In the capital, however, he had found himself at sea, defenceless, failing in his competitions at the School of Arts, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... same, and the reception of the poet (now in his seventieth year) at the University was enthusiastic. In 1842 he resigned his office of Stamp-Distributor, and Sir Robert Peel had the honor of putting him upon the civil list for a pension of L300. In 1843 he was appointed Laureate, with the express understanding that it was a tribute of respect, involving no duties except such as might be self-imposed. His only official production was an Ode for the installation of Prince Albert as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. His life was prolonged ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... conclusion, that the dates and other circumstances favour the supposed interview at Padua, between Fraunceis Petrark the laureate poet, and Dan Chaucer, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various
... many respects the most notable of the season's amateur magazines edited by our brilliant Laureate Recorder, Miss Verna McGeoch, it contains a surprisingly ample and impressive collection of prose and verse by our best writers; including the delectable lyricist Perrin Holmes Lowrey, whose work has hitherto been unrepresented in the press of the United. The issue opens with ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... translated into English Verse, by A.S. Cottle of Magdalen College, Cambridge. This work has an Introduction containing nothing worth discussing here, and an "Epistle" to A.S. Cottle from Robert Southey. The laureate, in good blank verse, discourses on the Old Norse heroes whom he happens to know about. They are the old favorites, Regner Lodbrog and his sons; in Southey's poem the foeman's skull is, as usual, the drinking cup. It was certainly time for ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... English long and short syllables—as far as "long" and "short" can be definitely distinguished in English—correspond precisely to the rules of Roman prosody. The present Laureate, Robert Bridges, whose investigations in English and Roman prosody have been incessant, has recently published a book of experiments in writing English quantitative hexameters. [Footnote: Ibant Obscuri. New York, ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... king grew more angry, but of course that did no good. At last calling the poet laureate of his kingdom, he asked ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... Calvinist in one sense than either of the Scotch poets we have named—he owes more to the general faith of others in his genius than to any special or strong works of his own; but let us be dumb, he is now Laureate—the crowned grasshopper of a summer day! Bailey of 'Festus' has a vast deal more power than Tennyson, who is only his delicate, consumptive brother; but 'Festus' seems either different from, or greater than, a work. We ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... romance; he has recut and reset a thousand ancient gems of Greece and Rome; he has roused our patriotism; he has stirred our pity; there is hardly a human passion but he has purged it and ennobled it, including "this of love." Truly, the Laureate remains the most various, the sweetest, the most exquisite, the most learned, the most Virgilian of all English poets, and we may pity the lovers of poetry ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... of course. What else would a young fool like her do? He inthrojooced her to the Poet Laureate, thinking shed inspire him. ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... hatred, and all unkindness, and pity will heal the old hurt and heart-ache of humanity. There is nothing in history, dark as much of it is, against the ultimate fulfilment of the prophetic vision of Robert Burns—the Poet Laureate of Masonry: ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... of the fragrant weed which Raleigh taught our gallants to puff in capacious bowls; which a royal pedant denounced in a famous 'Counterblast,' which his flattering, laureate, Ben Jonson, ridiculed to please his master; which our wives and sisters protest gives rise to the dirtiest and most unsociable habit a man can indulge in; of which some fair flowers declare that they love the smell, ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... Hallam Tennyson's biography of the laureate resents the opinion that his father was unsocial, but really leaves the commonly-received opinion unrefuted. Tennyson's reticence and love of contemplation and aloneness amounted to a passion. He was not a man of the people. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... in short, in which the nymphs may strew the laureate hearse, not only with all the flowers and fruits of earth, but with the Amaranth of paradise and the stars of heaven if the fancy takes them. Of a spirit compounded of these elements and of its quintessence are the 'Nymphals' of the Muses Elizium. There are portions of the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Welsh coast. Or in the roll of the Bay of Biscay, after a space watching the swinging fields of stars, to come down there was to drop into a welcoming circle of friends, to throw one's self down and pick up a book, the Laureate's "In Memoriam" or Mr. Thackeray's latest—and to glance from the pages of "Henry Esmond" to Prince Charlie's dagger lying peacefully on the desk.... How near! how near!... And up forward the lookout paced, or leaned over the ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... survive from the hour when Massachusetts was at its noon of prosperity; and local color of the orthodox tradition now persists in New England hardly anywhere except around Cape Cod, of which Joseph C. Lincoln is the dry, quaint, amusing laureate. ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... author above the fear of dying in want of necessaries. The two great dictators of literature, Ben Jonson in the earlier and Dryden in the later part of the century, only kept their heads above water by help of the laureate's pittance, though reckless imprudence, encouraged by the precarious life, was the cause of much of their sufferings. Patronage gave but a fitful resource, and the author could hope at most but an occasional crust, flung to ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... lovers have never seen each other only emphasizes its romantic quality. Their joy in beholding in actuality what they have for three long months cherished so dearly in imagination, is a theme for the poet laureate—who will, however, we fear, judging from his past performances, hardly do it justice. It is, as we have said, a love- match. The royal pair fell in love with what they had heard of each other—the Princess of Basque with the image she had formed ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... sickly adulation and false judgments of those who came there. Basil was not strong. He was pleasant, idle, rather vain, and a little inclined to be dissipated. Mrs. Octagon did not know that Basil was fond of dissipation. She thought him a model young Oxford man, and hoped he would one day be Laureate of England. ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... to be poet laureate, and she actually went out in the cold and got some laurel leaves—the spotted kind—out of the garden, and Dora made a crown and we put it on him. He was quite pleased; but the leaves made a mess, and Eliza said, 'Don't.' I believe that's a word grown-ups use more than any other. ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... poets, suggest many more wonders of the universe than may be at first apparent. Poets must always be prophets, or their calling is in vain. Put this standard of judgment to the verse-writers of the day, and where would they be? The English Laureate is no seer: he is a mere relater of pretty stories. Algernon Charles Swinburne has more fire in him, and more wealth of expression, but he does not prophesy; he has a clever way of combining Biblical ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... the whole current of Mr R's ideas, and altered his plans for me. I was no longer to be the future poet-laureate; I was no more enticed to sing great deeds, but to do them. The sword was to displace the pen, the hero the poet. Verse was too effeminate, and rhyme was severely interdicted, and to be forgiven only when it was produced ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... into the ears of his mistress his gentle fancies: the mother stilled her child with some bizarre allegory as she rocked it in her arms; the bard favored by royalty—the poet laureate—amused the idle moments of his chief with some witty improvisation; the alii himself, gifted with the poetic fire, would air his humor or his didactic comments in rhythmic shape—all in the form ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... Frechette, Poet Laureate, has as a French-Canadian, kindly written an "Introductory" in his own graceful language, and I have to thank him above all for his recognition of the spirit which has actuated ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... four battles had set him among the national heroes; he had been, in The Persians, the laureate of Salamis; by the sheer grandeur of his poetry he had won the prize thirteen times in succession.—And by the bye, it is to the eternal credit of Athenian intelligence that Athens, at one hearing of those obscure, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... committees, the one for the prosecution and the other for the defence of Mr. Eyre, parade the names of distinguished persons who are enrolled as subscribers on either side. Mill is set against Carlyle, and to counterbalance the adhesion of the Laureate to the Defence Fund, the "Star" hastens to announce that Sir Charles Lyell and Professor Huxley have given their support to the Jamaica Committee. Everything, of course, depends on the ground on which ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... the theme is a forbidden one; and I see, Constance, you do not like my poet, and I have a mind not to admire yours! Ah! poor Lovelace! he might have been my laureate." ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... worked, indeed, is so good that there would be a difficulty in spoiling it completely; but the prose of the translation in the English Bible, faultless as it is, loses nothing in Bunyan's hands, and if we found these poems in the collected works of a poet laureate, we should consider that a difficult task had been accomplished successfully. Bunyan felt, like the translators of the preceding century, that the text was sacred, that his duty was to give the exact meaning of it, without epithets or ornaments, and thus ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... request of their brother, And to hear how the water Comes down at Lodore, With its rush and its roar, As many a time They had seen it before. So I told them in rhyme, For of rhymes I had store; And 'twas in my vocation For their recreation That so I should sing; Because I was Laureate ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... early determination—a first one—to follow some ennobling profession, once he has come to man's estate, such as being a policeman, or a performer on the high trapeze. The poet would not have been the "Peoples' Laureate," had his fairy god- mother granted his boy-wish, but the Greenfield baker. For to his childish mind it "seemed the acme of delight," using again his own happy expression, "to manufacture those snowy loaves of bread, those delicious tarts, those toothsome bon-bons. And then to own them ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... the arrival of his majesty, Dryden's comedy entitled "The Wild Gallant" was produced, this being the first of twenty-eight plays which followed. In the year 1668 he had the honour to succeed Sir William Davenant as poet laureate, the salary attached to which office was one hundred pounds a year and a tierce of wine. His dignity was moreover enhanced, though his happiness was by no means increased, by his marriage with the Lady Elizabeth Howard, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... of circumstance into the every-day aspect of the gentleman of common cultivated society. That is Sir Coeur de Lion Plantagenet in the mutton-chop whiskers and the plain gray suit; there is the Laureate in a frockcoat like your own, and the leader of the House of Commons in a necktie you do not envy. That is the kind of thing you want to take the nonsense out of you. If you are not decanted off from yourself every few days or weeks, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... quite destitute of poets. As Henry V is said by a French chronicler to have ennobled all his army on the eve of Agincourt, so perhaps it might be well to make all our poets poets-laureate [laughter]—there must be a sip for each of them in the butt of malmsey or sack. But when the general public says "literature" the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various |
