Literature and Words

Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.

Prose alliteration should be used only for a special reason; when used by accident it falls upon the ear very disagreeably.

All men begin their learning with Homer.

The man who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.

Oh, if I had Orpheus’ voice and poetry with which to move the Dark Maid and her Lord, I’d call you back, dear love, from the world below. I’d go down there for you. Charon or the grim King’s dog could not prevent me then from carrying you up into the fields of light.

My library Was dukedom large enough.

A verse may find him who a sermon flies. 1

Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh To learned Chaucer; and rare Beaumont, lie A little nearer Spenser; to make room For Shakespeare in your threefold fourfold tomb.

Marlowe’s mighty line.

What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that everyone from whence they came, Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And resolv’d to live a fool, the rest Of his dull life.

The rest to some faint meaning make pretense, But Shadwell 5 never deviates into sense. 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.

Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go. To make a third, she joined the former two.

One simile that solitary shines In the dry desert of a thousand lines.

Who wants to understand the poem Must go to the land of poetry; Who wishes to understand the poet Must go to the poet’s land.

When learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose; Each change of many-color’d life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new: Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil’d after him in vain.

In the hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column; In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.

Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.

Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Burns, Shelley, were with us—they watch from their graves!

Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them.

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its saying where executives Would never want to tamper

I give you the end of a golden string;

And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly,

Journalism largely consists in saying ‘Lord Jones Dead’ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.

In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered.